South Korea has Samsung as one of the leading semiconductor manufacturers. However, the company’s plants have been straining in recent years with more advanced processes. Samsung has even lost major customers due to the problems. Now, a survey with the participation of local experts reflects that Korea’s semiconductor industry is lagging behind China’s in several key areas.
The Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning conducted the survey where 39 local chip experts participated. The results, which may be surprising to many, may not actually be so surprising considering the aspects evaluated. After all, the semiconductor industry goes far beyond just manufacturing. There’s also all the research and innovation that goes into chip design, among other things.
Korea’s semiconductor industry lagging behind China, experts say in survey
For context, the survey gives each country a score on a scale of 0-100%. In the “high-intensity and resistance-based memory technology” section, experts ranked Korea second. More specifically, the country scored 90.9%, while China scored 94.1%. Artificial intelligence hardware appears to be another area where Korean chips are lagging behind the Chinese. South Korea scored 84.1% compared to China’s 88.3%.
Beijing’s advantage over South Korea was much more evident when evaluating power semiconductors. In this category, Korea barely managed 67.5%, while China stood out with 88.3%. It was closer when evaluating the AI semiconductors category, but with South Korea still behind. In this case, Korea scored 84.1%, while China reached 88.3%.
The trend continued when evaluating the next-generation high-performance sensor technology area. Korea scored 81.3%, while China reached 83.9%. Lastly, there was a tie in the semiconductor packaging technology segment (74.2% for both).
The effectiveness of trade restrictions on China remains in doubt
The results allow for some conclusions. First, it seems that US trade restrictions have been less effective than expected for the Chinese tech industry. It seems that, on the contrary, government support has allowed Chinese companies not only to maintain their position but also to accelerate their progress. The situation reflected in the survey results was completely opposite to a few years ago.
On the other hand, this may serve as a wake-up call for the South Korean industry. The country could begin to move to further increase its competitiveness in the semiconductor segment.
