Foundry Companies on Alert
A former foundry executive of Samsung Electronics has moved to Intel, which recently announced re-entry in the foundry business.
Hao Hong, a former head of Samsung Electronics America's foundry division, recently announced via his SNS channel that he will work as a vice president of global business development at Intel starting from June.
After graduating from China University of Science and Technology and completing his master's degree at Stanford University, Hong joined Samsung Electronics in 2008 and has been engaged in the company’s semiconductor-related businesses for 13 years. Since 2014, he has handled the company’s foundry business.
In addition to Hong, Intel appointed Bob Brannan, a former vice president of emerging memory systems at Micron Technology as vice president of customer design support at IFS. Brannan worked at Samsung Electronics for about five years between 2013 and 2018. He worked for Intel for 22 years from 2009 and moved to Samsung Electronics and moved to Micron in 2018 where he worked for three years.
Foundry companies are nervous about Intel's re-entry in the foundry business. Considering Intel’s market position and financial strength, it can be a factor that will shake the market in the mid to long term. Currently, Taiwan's TSMC ranks first and Samsung Electronics second. The two are followed by Taiwan's UMC and U.S. GlobalFoundries and China’s SMIC.