[Newsis]
[Newsis]

Samsung Electronics is expected to stage a simultaneous recovery in both its high-bandwidth memory and foundry businesses, analysts say, as sales of sixth-generation HBM4 chips ramp up and yields at its leading-edge foundry processes improve. The company's "turnkey" capability — offering memory, foundry and advanced packaging under one roof — is drawing renewed attention from customers.

KB Securities said Friday that Samsung Electronics' global HBM market share, which stood at 33 percent in the second quarter, is on track to approach 40 percent in the fourth quarter.

Samsung's HBM share jumped 12 percentage points from 21 percent in the first quarter to 33 percent in the second, rapidly narrowing the gap with market leader SK hynix. Analysts say further share gains are possible as HBM4 shipments pick up in earnest in the second half of the year.

Samsung has projected that its HBM4 revenue will more than triple in the third quarter from the previous quarter, and that HBM4 will account for more than 60 percent of total HBM revenue in the second half.

The company's next-generation product roadmap is also taking shape. Following the start of HBM4 mass production, Samsung has begun supplying HBM4E samples to key customers, with plans to extend its lineup to HBM5 and zHBM, a next-generation three-dimensional architecture.

Competing in next-generation HBM, however, requires more than producing high-quality DRAM. The growing importance of the base die — the component at the bottom of an HBM stack that handles data input/output and control — means advanced foundry and packaging capabilities are increasingly essential.

That is precisely why Samsung's ownership of both memory and foundry operations is a competitive advantage. The company can handle everything from HBM DRAM and base die production to advanced packaging within a single supply chain, making it easier to tailor products to individual customer specifications.

Not just HBM: foundry yields improving too

Samsung's foundry business, long cited as a weak point in its semiconductor operations, is also entering a recovery phase.

KB Securities said Samsung's 4-nanometer foundry process yield has stabilized above 80 percent, while yields on its 2-nanometer gate-all-around process are improving rapidly. Yield — the proportion of functional chips produced from a single wafer — is a key metric that determines the productivity and profitability of a foundry operation.

Higher yields mean more sellable chips from the same wafer, lowering unit costs. Demonstrating stable mass-production capability is also critical to winning large customers.

In the second half, Samsung is expanding production of AI inference LPUs on its 4-nanometer process. The company is also accelerating efforts to secure mobile and AI/high-performance computing customers for its 2-nanometer node, with the goal of raising utilization rates across its leading-edge processes.

Analysts expect that if 4-nanometer utilization continues to rise and yields remain stable, the foundry business could lay the groundwork for a return to profitability as early as the second half of this year.

Improvements to the 2-nanometer process carry implications beyond the foundry business alone. If finer logic processes are applied to HBM base dies going forward, Samsung's foundry technology could translate directly into performance and power-efficiency advantages in its HBM products.

Memory + foundry + packaging: Samsung's play for the turnkey market

As the AI semiconductor market expands, HBM is shifting rapidly from commodity products toward customer-specific designs. The market for "custom HBM" — chips engineered to match the capacity, speed and power characteristics of specific GPUs or AI accelerators — is growing fast.

In this environment, customers must design not just memory but also logic semiconductors and packaging together. For Samsung, it opens a market where the company can leverage its integrated structure as a comprehensive semiconductor maker, rather than competing on memory chips alone.

KB Securities said that as the share of customized products grows after HBM4, HBM makers' pricing power could also increase.

The key question for Samsung's semiconductor business going forward is not simply how much it can grow HBM and foundry individually, but how effectively it can integrate the two. If Samsung recovers market share with HBM4 and stabilizes its 2-nanometer leading-edge process, its turnkey strategy — bundling memory, foundry and packaging — stands to gain considerably more traction.


rainbow@heraldcorp.com