Samsung Spins Off Display Unit; Spends $7B on Chip Plant

By Douglas Perry
published

Samsung said that it is building a new factory to manufacture NAND flash chips to meet the growing demand that is especially created by mobile computing devices.

Located in Xi’an, China, the factory will require an initial $2.3 billion investment, but is expected to swallow as much as $7 billion as demand for memory chips grows. Samsung's largest flash and DRAM fab which cost the company about $10.6 billion, was opened in September 2011 in South Korea.

According to DRAMeXchange, Samsung accounted for about 34.0 percent of all flash chips devices sold in the fourth quarter of last year. Toshiba was second with 29.7 percent of the market, followed by Hynix with 13.7 percent, Micron with 13.3 percent and Intel with 8.8 percent.

In unrelated news, Samsung said that it has spun off its display unit and officially launched Samsung Display today. Samsung Display employs about 20,000 people, operates five factories globally and has about $20 billion in annual revenue. Samsung Displays was originally founded as R&D unit of Samsung Electronics in 1991.

Douglas Perry
13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kaisellgren
    I hope this spin off yields in new 27-30" 1440p/1600p models :)
    Reply
  • Chaz21
    I just hope that the quality remains.
    Reply
  • alidan
    kaisellgrenI hope this spin off yields in new 27-30" 1440p/1600p models
    i dont want new, i want cheap. and i refuse 1440 i require 1600
    Reply
  • confish21
    yeah I hope this helps high rez monitors hit the 300 dollar range... 1080 is just the min.
    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    Display business isn't making a lot of money. I can see why Samsung did this.
    Reply
  • jonnyboyC
    So is this now separate from the Samsung conglomerate, or is it simply a subsidiary of Samsung electronics
    Reply
  • Blessedman
    A subsidiary. It's good that they did this, that company is just too large for just one board to control every aspect. Hopefully this allows then a little freedom to explore atypical displays.
    Reply
  • Marcus52
    alidani dont want new, i want cheap. and i refuse 1440 i require 1600
    Well then you are happy with what's out there now, because there is plenty of cheap going on.

    Okay, I get it, you are saying you want the price of 30" 2560x1600 monitors to come down, and you don't want a 16:9 display (2560x1440). I want those things a too, but for me, the 30" display, even at 2560x1600, has too large a pixel pitch; I want better displays with a higher pixel density, and better "refresh" rate than 60Hz.

    Making them better doesn't necessarily mean making them more expensive; if Samsung and LG - and the rest of the panel makers - would concentrate on higher quality and mass-selling that, instead of the low-grade stuff they've been selling, prices would indeed be much lower for the kind of displays that cost more today.

    Tablets and smart phones prove that higher pixel densities don't have to be expensive; true 120Hz monitors prove that 60Hz is simply a cheap standard arbitrarily agreed upon, not a real technological limitation. Let's get some 200+ DPI, 120Hz 30" panels going. Please.

    ;)
    Reply
  • bestlink101
    kaisellgrenI hope this spin off yields in new 27-30" 1440p/1600p modelsdont forget cheaper moniters,
    Reply
  • f-14
    eddieroolzDisplay business isn't making a lot of money. I can see why Samsung did this.that has to do with being stuck in the 1080 p resolution which was blown by before it ever became available on dvds.
    i had a 32" tube monitor with 1600x1200 back in 2003.
    Reply