Samsung Electronics (Korea) recently said that demand for chips from smartphone and PC manufacturers will decline in the second half of this year as users tighten spending on electronics.
While the world's leading memory chip and smartphone manufacturer has just reported its second quarter business results with the highest profit since 2018 thanks to large revenue from memory chips, its mobile business segment has witnessed a decline in profits in the context of geopolitical issues, inflation concerns, component shortages as well as rising logistics costs.
"In memory business, server demand is expected to remain strong while demand for chips for PCs and mobile devices may continue to weaken," the Korean company said.
Previously, chip maker Qualcomm warned that sales in the coming time will be affected by cooling demand for smartphones, adding a warning about chip sales as inflation increases, causing consumers to tighten spending.
In addition, the conflict in Ukraine and strict blockade and restrictive measures to prevent the COVID-19 epidemic in China - the world's largest smartphone consumer market, have caused supply chains to struggle, forcing many phone manufacturers to cut orders for chip production.
However, it can be seen that Samsung is relatively optimistic about smartphone demand in the second half of this year when the company said that the supply disruption has mostly been resolved and demand will not change or even have slight growth.
Technology giant Samsung is aiming for foldable smartphone sales to surpass its previous flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Note, in the second half of the year.
The world's largest smartphone and memory chip maker's operating profit reached 14.1 trillion won (10.8 billion USD) in the second quarter, compared to 12.57 trillion won in the same period last year.
Samsung said that the increase in the USD also plays an important role in contributing to the company's high profits. The reason is that the company's chip revenue is mainly calculated in USD while the profit report is in Won.
Recently, the giants in the semiconductor industry around the world have continuously made predictions about the "storm" of chip demand in the future.
The demand for chip for servers has become the only bright spot with increased sales as investments in core infrastructure and new growth areas such as AI and 5G are still expected to continue to expand, focusing on large data center companies, Samsung said.
Meanwhile, TSMC - the world's largest contract chip maker, also offered a supply list earlier this month on demand for high-tech chips used in data centers.
However, Korean chipmaker SK Hynix expects demand for memory chips to slow in the second half of this year as demand for server memory provided to data center customers is also likely to slow down as customers will consume their inventories.
