South Korean giant Samsung Electronics' attitude towards Vietnam is becoming increasingly elusive. A few days ago, Samsung's front foot will just move back to South Korea in Vietnam's smartphone production line, and the back foot has announced a new investment move in Vietnam, and it is also increasing production of high-end semiconductor components.
On February 17, local time, Samsung Electric (a subsidiary of Samsung Group) officially announced that it will invest 850 million US dollars (equivalent to 5.4 billion yuan) to establish a cutting-edge substrate mass production line for semiconductor packaging in Vietnam, and is expected to start mass production in the second half of 2023. Previously, Vietnamese officials had given the green light to this investment plan, and the new production line will be located at the existing factory in Tham Tien Province, Vietnam.
The mass production plan of Samsung Electric's new production line is mainly for the high-performance semiconductor packaging substrate called "FC-BGA", which is mainly used to connect semiconductor chips such as CPUs (central processing units) and GPUs (image processors) with electronic components of printed substrates, and is mainly used in smartphones and personal computers.
It is reported that the performance of semiconductors is closely related to the packaging substrate, especially when processing high-speed and large-capacity data, the advantages and disadvantages of the packaging substrate determine the chip processing speed.
As the entire semiconductor industry becomes more and more refined, improving packaging substrate technology will improve semiconductor performance. According to the idea of Samsung Group, Samsung Motor's increase in the production capacity of high-end packaging substrates in Vietnam will also help improve the semiconductor performance of Samsung Electronics.
At present, the chip foundry giants led by Samsung and TSMC are rushing towards the next process node, especially the launch of the 3nm process. Previously, Samsung said that its own 3nm process has completed the tape-out stage (trial production), and will conduct a quality assessment of its 3nm GAA process before June 2022.
Over the years, in order to save manpower and land costs, Samsung has transferred some of its production to overseas regions such as Southeast Asia, and Vietnam has become a favorite investment depression for Samsung. So far, nearly 60% of the nearly 300 million smartphones produced by Samsung every year have been handed over to Vietnam, and there are also home appliance and display factories in Vietnam.
However, the performance of the Vietnamese factory has not always satisfied Samsung. At the end of December 2021, Samsung decided to move two of its smartphone production lines in Vietnam back to Gumi, South Korea. This is a rare move in the eyes of the outside world, because this is the first time that Samsung has moved overseas production back to China after moving its manufacturing focus overseas.
The explanation given by Samsung is that the Vietnamese factory encountered forced factories such as the epidemic in 2021, and the factory operation was forced to stagnate, and the supply of some of Samsung's products was also facing challenges. In order to control future supply chain risks, Samsung had to break its teeth and swallow it in the stomach, and the Gumi factory took on this heavy responsibility.
In addition to pinning its hopes on its own factory, Samsung also intends to further explore the smartphone market in India in 2022. Previously, it was reported that in fiscal 2022, Samsung and Apple plan to produce mobile phones worth a total of $5 billion (equivalent to 31.6 billion yuan) in India.
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