Samsung Reportedly to Raise Chip Prices By 20%
Other manufacturers are also hiking up prices amid global shortages.
The global chip shortage continues to plague much of the tech industry, and now Samsung is reportedly raising the prices of its microchips for foundry clients by up to 20%.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, the South Korean tech giant is now in talks with various clients over price increases for chip-manufacturing contracts, potentially raising prices by 15-20% to reflect the increasing costs of production. The report also cites global instability as one of the reasons, highlighting the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 lockdown in China, and rising interest rates and inflation across the globe.
A spokesperson from Samsung declined to comment, but the move wouldn’t come as a surprise given industry trends over the past year. Both the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics Corp. are also planning to increase prices by a single-digit percentage either later this year or early 2023, and the former had already increased its prices by 20% back in 2021.
Samsung’s price hike can also be attributable to its $36 billion USD investment last year in its chip division, giving the company access to cutting-edge manufacturing processes including extreme ultraviolet lithography machines in an attempt to dethrone both Intel and TSMC.
Elsewhere in the tech industry, Meta is reportedly scrapping numerous Reality Labs projects.