South Korean media fn News reported yesterday that Samsung Electronics' Samsung foundry division has recently provided chip prototypes to Qualcomm, and is expected to obtain chip foundry orders for the latter's cutting-edge advanced processes such as 3nm.
Samsung foundry has been facing the problem of lack of large orders for advanced logic nodes with huge expenditures, which has seriously affected the profitability of this part of the business and caused serious losses. If Qualcomm's orders can be won, coupled with the good performance of mature nodes, the situation of this department is expected to improve this year.
The global foundry market is currently highly competitive. TSMC is further expanding its market share with the success of multiple generations of advanced processes. Intel's foundry Intel 18A process is also very competitive. There are also rumors of mergers between GlobalFoundries and UMC, two mature process companies.
Samsung foundry is facing unprecedented challenges, and the situation is not optimistic. Industry insiders said that how many major customers Samsung Electronics can win in 3nm and below advanced processes, and how to stably supply products, will be the key to its long-term performance improvement.