After it was reported that TSMC is thinking about building and operating a wafer fab in Japan, the CEO of Micron, a US-based memory manufacturer, Sanjay Mehrotra also said in an interview with Nihon Keizai Shimbun that Micron will cooperate with the Japanese government. By expanding investment in Japan, and cooperating with local equipment and materials companies to strengthen Japan's semiconductor supply chain. In response to this plan, Korean media said it may affect the development of South Korean memory manufacturers.
The report pointed out that Sanjay Mehrotra said that Micron is willing to cooperate with Japanese companies to develop the 5th generation 10nm-level DRAM production technology. In fact, Micron has announced at the Computex 2021 event in early June that it has begun mass production of the world's first 4th generation 10nm-class DRAM.
At present, South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix, two leading global memory manufacturers, rank first and second respectively in the global DRAM market. However, the two companies still focus on the production of the third-generation 10-nanometer DRAM. Therefore, with its leading technology, Micron has begun to gradually threaten South Korean memory manufacturers in terms of market share.
In addition, Micron also took a fancy to Japan's Kioxia, which has the world's second largest market share of NAND Flash flash memory. According to TrendForce, a global market research agency, TrendForce Consulting, Samsung Electronics currently ranks the leader in the global NAND Flash memory market with a market share of 33.5%, while Micron ranks No. 5 with a market share of 11.1%. If Micron successfully acquires Kioxia, which has a market share of 18.7%, Micron will further threaten Samsung.
The report also emphasized that in addition to memory manufacturer Micron, TSMC, the global foundry leader, has also reported that it will conduct a series of investment plans in Japan to strengthen cooperation with the United States and Japan. After TSMC announced in February that it would build a R&D plant for semiconductor materials in Tsukuba, Japan, Japanese media reported recently that TSMC plans to build a wholly-owned fab in Japan.
In contrast, TSMC has recently begun construction of an advanced process wafer fab in Arizona, USA, and plans to invest US$100 billion in the next three years to improve the technology and productivity of the wafer fab. South Korea's Samsung plans to invest 17 billion US dollars to expand the Texas wafer fab, and will make new investments in the P3 wafer fab production line in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. However, Samsung did not disclose any details of the new investment.
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