Why Samsung may welcome Apple's most expensive iPhone yet

Samsung Electronics may have an unlikely reason to welcome Apple's first foldable iPhone: The more Apple charges for it, the less shocking Samsung's own prices will look. Ahead of Samsung's expected unveiling of its Galaxy Z Fold 8 series in London in late July, its mobile business is walking into a hard launch. Memory and processor costs are climbing, leaks point to higher Galaxy prices, and Apple, absent from the category for years, is expected to enter in September with what could be the most

2026-06-25 12:48:07:00

SK hynix seeks AI premium with Nasdaq listing

SK hynix could float shares on the Nasdaq as soon as August, a move that would rank among the largest US listings in years and put one of the most important names in the artificial intelligence supply chain in front of American investors for the first time. The South Korean chipmaker, the main supplier of high-bandwidth memory to Nvidia, filed confidentially with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in March and has lined up Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America to manage t

2026-06-22 14:32:58:00

Samsung, SK hynix chip majors top SNU in admissions

Semiconductor majors run jointly with Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have overtaken Seoul National University's natural sciences programs in 2026's entrance scores. The shift puts a guaranteed chip-industry job, for the first time at this scale, in the same tier as the two destinations Korea's top science students have long prized above all others: medical school and Seoul National itself. The five contract departments posted an average entrance cutoff of 96.2 in the 2026 regular admissions cy

2026-06-21 11:25:14:00

SK's social value creation hits W32.2tr, double 2018 level

SK Group said Friday it created 32.2 trillion won ($21 billion) in social value last year, a figure that has roughly doubled since 2018 when the company first began measuring its social impact in monetary terms. Quantifying social impact in monetary terms lets SK track contributions that companies typically report only in qualitative terms. SK has done so annually for eight years under what it calls "double bottom line" management, an approach that treats economic value and social value as paral

2026-06-19 08:00:02:00

Samsung leans on AI, cost cutting to revive consumer business

Samsung Electronics used its twice-yearly strategy meetings this week to map out a turnaround for its consumer products business, betting on artificial intelligence and a retreat from low-margin markets to revive a division dwarfed by its booming chip operation. The meetings ran on Tuesday and Wednesday at Samsung's Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, campus under co-CEO Roh Tae-moon, who heads the Device eXperience division that includes the smartphone and TV business, working through the mobile, visual

2026-06-18 14:23:03:00

SK hynix ships HBM4E samples, joining Samsung in next-gen memory race

SK hynix said Thursday it has shipped samples of its 12-layer HBM4E, the next generation of high-bandwidth memory for artificial intelligence, to major customers, moving the company into the customer-qualification stage roughly three weeks after rival Samsung Electronics claimed the industry's first such shipment. The announcement moves the HBM4E contest toward the more decisive phase in which AI chipmakers verify the memory inside their actual accelerator platforms. In high-bandwidth memory, wh

2026-06-18 09:16:18:00

LG Innotek hopes AI boom can power W1tr chip substrate profit by 2031

LG Innotek, the South Korean components-maker best known for camera modules used in premium smartphones, wants its semiconductor substrate business to generate more operating profit by 2031 than the company as a whole earned last year. The unit, called package solutions, aims to raise its operating profit to 1 trillion won ($662 million) by 2031, from 128.9 billion won last year, with revenue rising past 3 trillion won by 2030, nearly double the 1.72 trillion won it booked in 2025. The profit ta

2026-06-17 12:06:58:00

Degrees no longer required at SK hynix as AI hiring race intensifies

SK hynix is removing all academic qualification requirements from its recruitment process, starting with a new round of open hiring that opened Wednesday. The world's leading maker of high bandwidth memory, the chips that feed Nvidia's artificial intelligence accelerators, says it will judge applicants on job skills and growth potential rather than degrees. Lines such as "open to applicants with a four-year bachelor's degree or higher" have been deleted from postings. Anyone whose experience, co

2026-06-17 11:46:39:00

Upstage bets on full home-grown AI stack as Korea pushes 'sovereign AI'

South Korean firm Upstage said Tuesday it will pull its model, its workplace AI tools and a web portal into a single operation. The bet is that a home-grown AI system built end-to-end can compete without leaning on American or Chinese technology, a pitch the company is making as it prepares to go public. The ambition is not Upstage's alone. It is one of five firms the government picked last year to develop Korea's own AI models rather than rely on foreign ones, a push officials call "sovereign A

2026-06-16 17:59:14:00

Why Korea's chip boom is stirring hopes far from Seoul

Across Korea’s southwest, politicians have spent the last week hinting that the country’s two chip giants may be preparing investments there. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix say they know nothing about it. The promise was put most plainly on June 6, when Min Hyung-bae, the incoming leader of the new unified Gwangju region, told a forum that the prime minister had leaned in and told him, quietly, that "something is coming." That something, he indicated, was a share of the semiconductor boom that

2026-06-16 15:03:38:00