Samsung to invest $220 million in the United States is semiconductor production line

According to the latest foreign media reports, Samsung on Friday local time announced that the company plans to invest $220 million, the creation of a semiconductor production line in the existing factory in the city of Austen in the U.S. state of Texas, specializing in the production of memory chips for the North American market.

Currently, Samsung is one of the world's most important DRAM chips and NAND flash chip manufacturers, which, DRAM chips for personal computers, NAND flash memory chip is mainly used for memory cards and consumer electronics products.

Samsung said the vice president Kim Il Ung held in the semiconductor business days prior to the conference call, the new production line is expected to be completed in the third quarter of next year, but the company has not yet decided what the first production chip, so Samsung plans by the end of this year to the demand of the market investigation, in order to make the final decision.

Samsung also said the same day, the first quarter of this year, its memory chip business sales fell 16%. Although PC manufacturers than expected to quickly use DDR2 memory, NAND flash chip prices continued to decline led to the company's chip sector failed to achieve the desired objectives.

Since the computer manufacturers have their products in the configuration of a larger capacity of memory, Samsung expects this year's DRAM chip market demand will grow by 45% in 2005. The first quarter of this year, the average computer memory capacity of 552MB from the same period last year, increased to 705MB.

Samsung also said that the introduction of large capacity MP3 music player, as well as the decline in the market price of NAND flash, will help the growth of market demand, thereby promoting the development of the entire NAND flash market. At the same time, consumers will buy a larger capacity for digital cameras flash memory card, will also help the growth of market demand.