Samsung to focus on chip packaging, on-device AI
Samsung Electronics will focus on nurturing emerging business areas such as AI memory chips, advanced chip packaging, on-device AI, robots and digital health care to drive new growth, its executives told shareholders during an annual meeting, Wednesday.
“We will continue to innovate in the areas of AI, customer experience and ESG, which are the company’s future key terms, and further strengthen our organization and execution system to quickly discover new products, new businesses and new business models,” Han Jonghee, vice chairman of the company, said during the annual meeting. ESG stands for environmental, social and corporate governance.
The vice chairman also said Samsung will continue to enhance its technical leadership by strengthening R&D and facility investments, despite the many uncertainties in its business environment this year.
“Although the macroeconomic environment is expected to be uncertain this year, we see an opportunity for increased growth through next-generation technology innovation,” Han said. “Last year, despite the challenging business environment, we made efforts to enhance our product competitiveness and technical leadership by strengthening R&D and proactive facility investment. With these efforts, Samsung maintained its top five global status with a brand value of $91.4 billion, according to an evaluation by management consulting company Interbrand.”
As a means of driving new growth, the vice chairman said that AI features will be installed in all of Samsung’s home appliances.
“Samsung plans to apply AI to all devices, including smartphones, foldable devices, accessories and extended reality (XR), to provide customers with a new experience where generative AI and on-device AI unfold,” he said.
The company also plans to accelerate the cultivation of new businesses, such as next-generation automotive electronics, robotics and digital health care, by enhancing its overall AI capabilities.
“We are facing faster technological changes than ever before,” the vice chairman and head of the Device eXperience (DX) division of the company said. “The DX division will be more bold and better prepared for the future.”
Kyung Kye-hyun, president of Samsung’s semiconductor unit, said the company will regain the top spot in the global semiconductor sector, which it lost to the U.S. chip giant Intel last year in terms of revenue.
To strengthen its semiconductor business, Samsung plans to focus on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) DRAM, an AI memory chip, and develop its advanced chip packaging business.
“We cannot maintain our position as the top semiconductor company in the long term with just our existing businesses like memory chips,” Kyung told shareholders. “The advanced packaging business will generate over $100 million in sales this year with our 2.5D products.”
The 2.5D products mentioned by the president refer to 2.5-dimensional packaging, a packaging technology that integrates multiple chips horizontally into a single package. As semiconductor technology advances, making chips smaller becomes increasingly challenging in terms of both technology and cost, so packaging technology, which connects multiple semiconductors to function as one, is currently getting a lot of attention as an alternative.