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| US President Joe Biden is giving a speech with a semiconductor chip before signing an executive order to secure a supply chain of key items such as semiconductors, rare earths and batteries at the White House in Washington on the 24th (local time). © AFP=News1 © News1 Reporter Dongmyeong Woo |
Most of the world’s automakers, except for Hyundai Motor, which have secured sufficient quantities in advance due to the scarcity of automotive semiconductors, are disrupting their operations. Following the electric car maker Tesla, Apple, the leading US company, is predicted that the operation may be suspended. have.
As the recent turmoil in the supply of system semiconductors for vehicles expands to the memory semiconductor field, shortages in the overall semiconductor industry are expected to shake the market.
In a market outlook report on the 26th, semiconductor market research firm Trend Force said, “The price of server DRAM for the second quarter of this year is expected to increase by 10-15% from the first quarter.” Forecast.
Trend Force initially proposed an 8-13% price increase forecast for the second quarter of this year, but raised the forecast on the day.
Trend Force also said, “As DRAM suppliers show a conservative trend toward increasing production this year, server DRAM shipments will fall below market demand by the third quarter,” and “Annual price may rise by more than 40%.”
Due to the nature of the semiconductor industry, once a product is changed, it takes up to a month to a month and a half to change the product again. Some semiconductor products may take about 300 days to be supplied after placing an order.
It is difficult to adjust production items from time to time because it takes a considerable amount of time to increase the yield after adjusting production items, and semiconductor manufacturers have to bear sales losses for this period.
In particular, server DRAM is a product that enters the data center of a global cloud service company called FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google). If the supply of DRAM for servers is disrupted, American companies such as Apple will have to disrupt their operations.
Server DRAM is much more profitable than general memory DRAM. It is reported that server DRAM has surpassed mobile DRAM in the first half of last year to the late 40% of Samsung Electronics’ total DRAM sales.
Accordingly, in the market, it is observed that if the price of server DRAM exceeds the expected level at the beginning of this year and rises, Samsung Electronics can also make a surprise.
According to F&Guide, a financial information company, Samsung Electronics’ average forecast for this year’s earnings, as suggested by securities companies, is KRW 26.74 trillion in sales and KRW 45.97 trillion in operating profit. If this year’s results come out as expected, sales are expected to hit a record high.