According to the Dow Jones news agency, the new boss of Samsung Electronics reckons the semiconductor market will be weak in the second half of the year. Normally Q3 is the best quarter of the year and Q4 is relatively strong making the second half traditionally stronger than the first half.
Kwon Oh’hyun, president of Samsung Electronics, which now encompasses both ICs and LCDs, points to a chip glut and weak demand as leading to thinner margins for semiconductor suppliers, so he’s saying that H2 will be flat with H1.
Malcolm Penn. CEO of Future Horizons disagrees with Kwon. “It could be that the memory market is soft because the PC market is as dead as a dodo,” Penn told EW, “but, overall, the second half market will grow 6-7% compared to the first half, and the growth for 2011 on 2010 will be between 7% and 8%.”
The remarks by Kwon follow on the recent remarks of Hynix’s CFO that memory demand is weakening just as supply ramps up following manufacturing capacity investments made a year ago.