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In 2020, SK Hynix signed an acquisition agreement for Intel's flash memory business to take over a flash memory plant located in the Dalian region of China.
After a long wait, the deal finally came to fruition, and on December 22 this year, China's regulatory authorities approved the acquisition of SK Hynix's Flash memory business.
South Korea's SK Hynix becomes the "takeover man"
On December 30, Fast Technology news, SK Hynix announced that it successfully completed the acquisition of Intel's flash memory business and domestic factories, and paid Intel $7 billion.
However, this is only the first phase of the acquisition, and the second phase of delivery is expected to be completed by 2025, when SK Hynix will also pay a balance of $2 billion to Intel.
Why did Intel sell its flash business? In fact, as early as 2019, Intel needed to sell several non-core businesses, of which the flash business was one of the businesses to be divested.
Of course, for Intel, selling the flash memory business will be able to slim down and focus on developing more core businesses, such as global foundry business.
It should be known that in order to restore the former foundry glory, Intel has begun to focus on the development of foundry business, began to build chip factories around the world, in mid-December, Intel CEO announced that it will invest 7 billion US dollars to establish a new chip packaging and test factory in Malaysia.
In other words, Intel sold the flash memory factory in Dalian, China, and the $7 billion obtained can be fully subsidized to the Malaysian factory, which undoubtedly reduces the economic burden for Intel.
SK Hynix flash memory field strength comprehensively improved
For Intel, the flash memory business may be a burden and seriously drag down its own development, but for SK Hynix, the acquisition of flash business will enhance its strength in the field of flash memory.
According to market research agency Omdia data, in the third quarter of 2021, SK Hynix won 13.6% of the market share in the global NAND flash memory market; Intel occupied 5.9% of the market share.
Nowadays, Intel will sell the NAND division to SK Hynix, which means that Intel's global NAND market share will also be swallowed up by SK Hynix, so that the strength of SK Hynix will be further enhanced, and it is expected to surpass Japanese armor to become the world's second largest flash memory chip manufacturer.
Not only that, the acquisition of Intel's flash memory business not only increased market share, but also made SK Hynix's technical strength more abundant.
You know, Intel is once a very powerful semiconductor giant, accumulating a lot of intellectual property rights in the flash memory business, as well as research and development personnel.
After the completion of the merger and acquisition of SK Hynix, Intel's accumulated technology and talents in the flash memory field will be acquired by SK Hynix.
In this way, with the help of the technology accumulated by Intel, we will further make up for the shortcomings of SK Hynix in the field of flash memory, and the strength is expected to approach Samsung.
So, does the improvement of SK Hynix' strength have an impact on Chinese enterprises? In the author's opinion, the improvement of SK Hynix's strength in the field of flash memory has a great impact on Chinese companies, because the company attaches great importance to the development of the Chinese market, and presumably will not do anything that falls into the well.
The most critical thing is that Chinese storage companies have begun to exert efforts, such as Yangtze River Storage, are expanding production capacity to improve market share, SK Hynix wants to monopolize China's flash memory chip market is obviously somewhat unlikely.
Moreover, after SK Hynix acquired Intel's flash memory business, the final spearhead was still directed at Samsung and competed for the throne of the flash memory market.
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In summary, with the further integration of Intel's flash memory business by SK Hynix, the strength will be further enhanced, at which time, the global flash memory market will usher in great changes, and may usher in a new round of reshuffle.