Samsung to invest in more production

THERE ARE SIGNS that the world's largest memory chipmaker, Samsung is feeling a bit flush.

The outfit has decided to invest $790 million in a semiconductor production facility.

ETnews reports that Samsung will be splashing out on capital investments for its chip business in the second half of the year.

Kwon Oh-hyun, president of Samsung's semiconductor division, said the outfit expects its investment in the second half to rise "slightly" from the first half. Obviously his definition of "slightly" is different than ours.

But Samsung never tells anyone about the size of its capital expenditures in advance so no one can be really certain.

ETnews quoted an un-named source who talked about the plans and told it that the chip division investment in the second half would focus on introducing more advanced production technology, such as a 40nm process for DRAM chips and 30nm for NAND flash memory.

Samsung has been reporting better results lately, but no one would think the outfit is home and dry yet. In fact it could be said that it is probably still some streets away. Most analysts expect Samsung to be cautious about capacity expansion at present.

Kwon has said Samsung's chip business will record a profit in the second quarter. µ