Korean High-Tech Firms Showing Signs of Recovery But Concerns Remaining

As mentioned in the previous posts, Korean high-tech firms have dominated the certain high-tech fields such as memory chips, TFT-LCD panels, and cell phones. Korean high-tech firms have shown increases in corporate earnings growth in these areas where as other global contenders have failed to hold the global market share.

As for the chip business, Korean chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor combined see a slight increase of 61 percent of the global DRAM market in the second quarter. This may be partly owing to the bankruptcy of Qimonda, German memory chipmaker which took up 9 percent market share last year. The global market share of three major Taiwanese chipmakers, Powerchip Semiconductor, ProMos, and Nanya Tech fell by about 7 percent.

The Korean TFT-LCD panel makers’ performance looks good as well. Samsung and LG account for 55 percent of the total LCD display market in Q2, 10 percent up from the same period last year.

The Korean mobile phone makers have demonstrated strong performance. They grabbed 30 percent market share in Q2, 6 percentage year-on-year increase while other global players like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola all lost around 4 percent each.

I have discussed how Korean high-tech firms have become major global players in these three high-tech fields in prior posts.

Despite their exceptional performance in downturn, their future performance looks uncertain as the vigor of the global economy remains in doubt.