South Korea urged to guard chip profitability as China’s CXMT and YMTC gain market share

China’s expanding semiconductor industry is fuelling mounting anxiety in South Korea, where a new consultancy report has warned local chipmakers to defend profitability as Chinese rivals scale up production and strengthen market share.

Samil PwC, the South Korean member firm of the global consultancy, said in a report made public on Monday that Chinese competition would likely heat up first in the areas of conventional memory, mature-node manufacturing, and packaging and testing.

To stay ahead, Samil PwC urged South Korean semiconductor companies to sharpen cost competitiveness in commodity memory while doubling down on cutting-edge sectors such as advanced packaging and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which are used alongside AI processors in a stacked configuration.