Samsung crosses one of the most difficult stages in its history. His problem is that he is not able to keep up with TSMC and SK Hynix

Samsung is dealing with a complicated stage. These statements carried out just a few hours ago by Han Jong-Hee, general co-director of this South Korean company, diagnoses precisely What’s happening: “First of all I sin artificial intelligence (AI), which quickly evolves. “

This Mea guilt It is aimed at the company’s shareholders and expresses that the directive dome recognizes not having taken The appropriate decisions In recent years. “Our technological advantage has been compromised in all our businesses. It is difficult status quo Instead of generating disruptive changes, “says an internal statement written by Jay Y. Lee, the president of the company, according to Reuters.

Loss of competitiveness is a big problem for Samsung

Han Jong-Hee’s statements insinuate clearly that Samsung has not been able to get on the AI ​​train that currently leads the Taiwanese TSMC semiconductor manufacturer with hardly any opposition. This last company produces the integrated circuits for AI designed by NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom and other companies, which has led it to lead the global chip manufacturing industry with an approximate quota of 60%.

The company led by CC Wei He announced In the middle of last January their economic results during 2024, and are extraordinary. In fact, their income beat a record by increasing 34% compared to those obtained in 2023. Only during December 2024 the 8,400 million dollars exceeded, a figure that represents an increase of 57.8% compared to the same month of the previous year. The engine of these figures are precisely the semiconductors for AI applications. TSMC’s economic performance, as we have just seen, is noticeably better than Samsung’s.

However, this is not all. And is that The also South Korean Sk Hynix Threatens Samsung’s leadership in the memory chip market. In fact, it has already exceeded the benefits of this last company thanks to the excellent reception that its HBM memories are having (High Bandwidth Memory), which are designed to work side by side with the GPUs for ia. In this situation the hope of Samsung to return to the path of growth resides in 2 nm chips.

And the first green sprouts They have already arrived. The Japanese chips designer for the preferred networks (PFN) and a South Korean company specialized in the design of neuronal processing units (NPU) have already formalized orders for their lithographic node of 2 nm. In fact, Digitimes Asia ensures that the massive production of integrated circuits of 2 nm It has already begun in South Korean plants of Samsung. Whatever one thing we can be safe: 2025 will be the year of the semiconductors of 2 nm. TSMC starts from a very comfortable position, but with all probability Intel and Samsung will also put all the meat on the grill.

Image | Samsung

More information | SCMP | Reuters

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