Workers' strikes and a gloomy forecast for its foundries take the shine off Samsung's AI-boosted revenue and profits

pcgamer.com:

With an estimated 15-fold increase in operating profits, everything looks rosy for Samsung Electronics, thanks to the AI world's demand for memory chips. However, while DRAM, flash memory, and other chips are ranking in the money, thousands of workers are going on an indefinite strike and independent research predicts that its worldwide market share in chip manufacturing will tumble from 31% to just 9% by 2032.

It's fair to say that Samsung Electronics, the chip manufacturing and electronics division of the Samsung Group, is going through some mixed fortunes of late. AI's insatiable appetite for high-end RAM and flash memory chips has pushed prices by as much as 20% in the second quarter of the financial year (via Reuters).

Although that growth has subsided, it still resulted in Samsung predicting a 23% increase in revenue and a staggering 1470% rise in operating profits compared to a year ago. That colossal gain in profits is mostly down to Samsung cancelling a writedown of its older chip inventory, as demand for those has suddenly increased, raising their value considerably.

But while the money is clearly rolling in on the back of the AI boom, all is not well at Samsung. The NSEU (National Samsung Electronics Union) has just concluded a three day strike (as reported by the BBC), demanding better pay and benefits, but it's already called for another strike to start today—except this one is to be indefinite.

With approximately 30,000 members in the union, it would only require a small percentage of them to go on strike to have a noticeable impact on Samsung's productivity, though the company has told the BBC that «no disruptions [will] occur in the production lines.»

At a conference discussing South Korea's national strategy for semiconductors (via X-user Harukaze5719), Samsung's vice president of global research, Ian Jae, bemoaned the lack of government support for chip manufacturing, compared to that implemented by the United States, Japan, and the EU.

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