Samsung will invest $4bn to renovate Texas chip plant

KOREAN HARDWARE MAKER Samsung has said it will invest $4bn in renovating its chip factory in Austin, Texas.

Samsung will make the investment to refresh existing chip production and boost production of system chips widely used in smartphones and tablets, due to the growing demand for such devices.

The investment will be the largest ever single foreign investment in Texas and will bring Samsung's cumulative investments in Samsung Austin Semiconductor to over $13bn since it became operational in 1996.

As the world's second-largest chip maker after California based Intel, Samsung's big outlay will follow the firm's $22.1bn capital expenditure plan for 2012, with the bulk of it to be allocated to chip investment on existing production lines.

The news of the investment as well as the firm's capital expenditure this year signals Samsung's focus on growing its semiconductor division to compete against Intel and big Taiwanese chipmakers such as TSMC.

Samsung announced back in June that it will also invest just under $2bn over the next two years to build a new non-memory chip line in South Korea. µ