By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff Reporter
Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor, which have been pressured to increase the size of the profitable non-memory business due to steady price declines in memory chips, are stepping up efforts to foster the non-memory sector with new follow-up measures.
Samsung is the world’s largest manufacturer of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips with a global market share of 27.7 percent, while the runner-up Hynix accounts for 22.8 percent in the third quarter, according to iSuppli, a market research firm.
The unit price of the outdated 512-megabyte DRAM chip used in personal PCs has fallen over 90 percent from earlier this year and Hynix, where the portion of DRAM production accounts for over 70 percent, suffered a setback in the third quarter as weakening chip prices directly dented the company.
On Tuesday, Samsung said it has commercialized the single-chip radio frequency identification (RFID) reader for mobile devices such as PDA and mobile PCs for the first time in the industry.
Set for a UHF range of 900MHz, the industry’s smallest 6.5mm x 6.5mm chip integrates an analog front end, a base-band modem, a processor and a memory chip. The low power consumption level of 850mV is suitable for mobile applications, according to the company.
``We will mass-produce the chip from December this year in the fifth line of our plant in Giheung, Gyeonggi Province,’’ said Chung Chil-hee, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics’ System LSI division, adding he expects the unit price of the chip to fall below $20 from the current $40 a month after.
Unlike the stationary RFID chip, the new mobile chip is to be used in card-type readers that plug into mobile handsets.
According to market research firm RoA Group, global demand for mobile RFID is expected to swell from $26.9 billion in 2007 to $701 billion in 2010, after annual growth of 196 percent.
Strategic Alliance for Hynix
On the same day, Hynix said it acquired an option to buy a certain stake of SiliconFile Technologies, a local maker of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) or CIS products.
CIS, utilized in mobile phone cameras, uses 10 percent of the power of widely used charged coupled device image sensors.
Under the strategic partnership, Hynix will produce and sell the products using SiliconFile’s design and provide foundry services, according to the company.
``We will look for the right time to exercise the rights, while the company starts mass-producing the products during the fourth quarter of 2008,’’ Hynix spokesperson Park Hyun told The Korea Times.
According to industry estimates, U.S.-based Micron Technology, Omnivision, STMicro and Japan-based Toshiba collectively accounted for nearly 65 percent of the CIS market in 2006. Hynix once dominated the market before selling MagnaChip.
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