Samsung Foundry Forum Opens in Santa Clara, California

Samsung Electronics is planning to strengthen its foundry business. In this context, the company is going to meet with fabless firms in the United States on May 22. At present, Samsung Electronics is aiming to become second only to TSMC in the foundry market this year.

This year’s Samsung Foundry Forum is scheduled for May 22 in Santa Clara, California. A large number of fabless companies, including Qualcomm, join it. At the event celebrating its third anniversary this year, Samsung Electronics presents 7 nm-and-below microfabrication technology, semiconductor production techniques for the IoT and fingerprint recognition, etc. The same event takes place in Shanghai on June 14, Seoul on July 5, Tokyo on September 4 and Munich on October 18.
 

Earlier, in May last year, Samsung Electronics turned its foundry business team in the System LSI Division into a separate business unit. President Jung Eun-seung is currently heading the team and his appointment shows Samsung’s eagerness to beef up its non-memory business.

Samsung’s foundry business still has a long way to go compared to its memory business. According to market research firm IHS Markit, the former’s sales-based global market share stood at 6.72% as of the end of 2017, when TSMC’s reached as high as 50.41%. However, Samsung is aiming to increase its share to over 10% and sales to at least US$10 billion this year in order to overtake GlobalFoundries and UMC. In this regard, Samsung is going to initiate the test production of EUV-based 7 nm chips in the second half of this year.