DeepSeek shocks semiconductors / KBS 2025.01.31.

[Anchor]
Last year, Samsung Electronics' semiconductor division faced significant challenges and ultimately received a performance report that fell far short of expectations.
As a measure to improve performance, they introduced high-performance semiconductor chips for AI, but with the emergence of China's AI, 'DeepSeek', our semiconductor industry has taken on an additional challenge.
Reporter Jung Jae-woo has the details.
[Report]
In the fourth quarter of last year, Samsung Electronics' semiconductor division recorded an operating profit of 2.9 trillion won.
After the second quarter, profits continued to decline and did not meet already lowered market expectations.
Samsung's main focus is on general-purpose memory semiconductors.
Sales of PCs and mobile devices, which use these chips, have decreased, and the competition from low-cost Chinese semiconductors has intensified.
The most painful aspect was the underperformance in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), where demand surged due to artificial intelligence (AI).
Samsung Electronics, which was surpassed by SK Hynix in annual operating profit by over 8 trillion won, is strategizing to increase HBM supply to turn the situation around.
[Kim Jae-jun/Samsung Electronics Memory Business Division Strategic Marketing Director/Samsung Electronics Conference Call: "We expect visible supply increases to begin in earnest from the second quarter."]
SK Hynix, a leader in HBM, saw its stock price drop nearly 10% today (1.31).
This was caused by the significant shock from the new competitor, China's AI 'DeepSeek.'
It demonstrated performance comparable to ChatGPT with relatively inexpensive low-spec chips, shaking the market.
While the semiconductor industry finds it difficult to predict the impact, they expressed hope that the market could expand since HBM is also used in the development of DeepSeek.
[Kim Jeong-ho/Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at KAIST: "The AI hegemony competition between the U.S. and China is expected to accelerate further. We predict that demand will ultimately continue to increase."]
However, there are concerns that investment may inevitably shrink as reports emerge that the Trump administration in the U.S. is expanding export regulations to include low-spec semiconductors.
[Noh Geun-chang/Head of Research Center at Hyundai Motor Securities: "From NVIDIA's perspective, they need to generate more profit from their existing market, right? This is not good for hardware manufacturers like ours."]
This means our semiconductor companies, which saw contrasting results last year, now face an unexpected external variable.
This is KBS News, Jung Jae-woo.
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