Samsung Electronics is looking to build a chip development facility in Japan for an estimated cost of 20 billion yen or USD 222 million, according to Nikkei Asia.
The South Korean electronics major’s investment will build a production line for a prototype chip device at the facility which is expected to come up in Yokohama. The facility will focus on back-end of the chip production process.
Yokohama already hosts Samsung’s existing site, Samsung R&D Institute Japan. Now, a new development hub will come up in the city as a separate unit. This unit will employ several hundred people and operations are expected to begin by 2025.
Nikkei reported that Samsung is looking to make use of subsidies offered by the Japanese government from investment which are expected to total more than 10 billion yen.
Samsung is the world’s biggest memory chip maker but is looking to cut back on chip production after its sales dropped sharply and it flagged a 96 per cent drop in first-quarter profits, worse than expected.
Earlier this year, Samsung said it would not slash its memory chip investment despite dwindling demand, hoping for a recovery of the memory chip market in the second quarter of this year. At the same time, its peers, such as Micron Technology, Kioxia and SK Hynix have cut their memory chip production to counter oversupply.
