According to a report from Commercial Times, citing Yonhap News, China’s “Old-for-New” Policy, which promotes consumer trade-ins for new products, helped drive significant growth for South Korean semiconductor companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, in the Chinese market in 2024.
Meanwhile, as Commercial Times highlights, Donald Trump’s election victory last November raised concerns over potential tariffs, prompting Chinese manufacturers to stockpile memory chips in advance. This also boosted sales for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
As reported by Yonhap News, Samsung Electronics‘ annual financial report shows that the company’s exports to China totaled 64.9 trillion won (USD 44.8 billion) in 2024, reflecting a 53.9% increase from the 42.3 trillion won recorded the previous year.
As Yonhap News highlights, the figure slightly surpassed the company’s 61.5 trillion won in exports to the U.S.
Furthermore, the annual report disclosed that Samsung China Semiconductor Co., its Xi’an-based NAND flash memory manufacturing unit, recorded 11.2 trillion won in sales in 2024, up from 8.7 trillion won the previous year. Additionally, Shanghai Samsung Semiconductor Co. reported 30.1 trillion won in revenue for 2024, nearly doubling the 15.6 trillion won posted in the previous year, as noted by Yonhap News.
A report from Chosun Biz states that Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor exports to China include mobile components such as DRAM, NAND flash, image sensors, and display driver integrated circuits (DDI), as well as high-bandwidth memory products like HBM2 and HBM2E.
Similarly, SK hynix’s sales in China also saw significant growth. According to Chosun Biz, its Wuxi-based production subsidiary, SK hynix Semiconductor China, recorded 5.6 trillion won in sales and 598 billion won in operating profit in 2024. This marks a major turnaround from 2023, when it posted a net loss of 1.5 trillion won, reflecting an improvement of approximately 745 billion won.
Moreover, its sales subsidiary ‘SK hynix (Wuxi) Semiconductor Sales,’ which handles both DRAM and NAND in China, reported sales and net profit of 13.1 trillion won and 1.4 trillion won respectively last year, reflecting increases of 64.3% and 65.4% compared to the previous year, as highlighted by Chosun Biz.
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(Photo credit: Samsung)