A model poses by Samsung Electronics’ multi-level cell-based 2.5-inch 256-gigabit SATAII solid-state drive, Monday, at the “Samsung Mobile Solution Forum” held in the Westin Taipei Hotel, Taiwan.
/ Courtesy of Samsung Electronics |
 By Kim Yoo-chul
Korea Times Correspondent
TAIPEI, Taiwan ― A top ``chip man'' Monday said the outlook for the market is still gloomy.
``The likelihood is that there will be no pickups in chip demand for the foreseeable future,'' Kwon Oh-hyun, CEO of Samsung Electronics' Semiconductor Business said, citing uncertainties in the global economy.
Kwon was here for Samsung Mobile Solution Forum, a venue which has served to host discussions among some 1,000 experts since 2004.
``Memory chip prices are still bottoming out,'' he said.
Chipmakers had invested heavily in new facilities in 2005 and 2006, hoping to gain more market share with higher expectations of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system.
But concerns over technical flaws forced PC makers to avoid releasing new versions, dragging down profitability for chipmakers.
On April 25, Samsung said it will invest 7 trillion won in the memory business in 2008 despite the continuing supply glut in the chip industry. In Taipei, Kwon reiterated Samsung's earlier stance to be more aggressive in its chip business
``Samsung will raise the portion in sales of profitable non-memory business to over 20 percent overall every year starting this year,'' he said.
Dubbing it as a tough sell, he said that no efforts will be spared in achieving the heightened target by selling more in areas such as digital TVs, Blu-ray discs and controllers for solid-state drives (SSD). Non-memory parts accounted for 18 percent of Samsung's total chip sales of 18.66 trillion won, last year.
On another note, the top Samsung man said Samsung will cooperate with smaller rival Hynix Semiconductor on a case-by-case basis.
Meanwhile, at this year's international forum, Kwon admitted that there was nothing new about what they are unveiling, though it said it developed the world's fastest multi-level cell (MLC)-based SSD.
Based on the traditional NAND flash used in USB sticks, the hard drive offers a dramatically improved reading speed, enhanced durability and low power consumption, threatening conventional hard disk drives. In layman's terms, this means a change of generation for laptops, replacing the conventional HHD drive and entailing a lot of applications in shape and speed.
The 2.5-inch 256-gigabit SATAII using a finer 51-nanometer class technology provides a sequential writing speed of 160 megabits per second and writing speed of 200 megabits, Samsung said in a statement.
But California-headquartered STEC Technology developed a 9.5-millimeter-thick MLC-based 2.5-inch gigabit SATAII SSD in December last year, the same as Samsung's.
Samsung made slight improvements as the U.S. company then said the read and write speed of its product was 90 megabits and 60 megabits, respectively.
``I admit the newest drive was not enough to be showcased at the annual international exhibition,'' Kwon said.
``Samsung is exaggerating the description of its SSD technology. For me, this is nothing new. The company wouldn't have been calling me to show-off another duplication,'' one participant said, asking not to be identified.
``Samsung should give us a rough idea, at least, for possible price moves of its product,'' the unnamed attendee said. Samsung declined to comment.
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