The Federation of Korean Industrie said in a report on the 25th that the share of South Korean semiconductor companies in China, the world’s largest semiconductor market, began to decline after the United States began to restrict its semiconductor supply in 2019.
According to BusinessKorea, memory chips account for the largest share of South Korean companies’ products, and as supplies are constrained, China has begun to increase imports of non-memory chips and reduce imports of memory chips.
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In 2021, China’s semiconductor imports will grow by no less than 37.2% year on year, while South Korea’s growth rate is only 6.5%. At the same time, the market share of Korean companies in mainland China will drop from 24.7% in 2018 to 19.2% in 2021.
The Korea Semiconductor Industry Federation explained: ” Huawei stopped buying Korean-made memory chips due to restrictions, which is related to the change in market share. In addition, the price of memory chips fell last year, and China’s imports of Korean-made memory chips were higher than in 2018. It’s down 13.7%.”
“The Korean government’s subsidies to semiconductor companies are far lower than other regions,” the report said. For example, the sales subsidy ratios of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix (as of June this year) were only 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. This compares to 6.6% for SMIC, 5% for Hua Hong Group, 4% for Tsinghua Unigroup, 3.8% for Micron Technology, 3% for TSMC and Qualcomm, and 2.2% for Intel.
