Given the significant capital spending undertaken by Samsung Electronics in 2010, the company reiterated in its full-year financial results that semiconductor CapEx would fall in 2011. Expected softness in the DRAM memory market due to overcapacity, could behind the move.
Samsung said that semiconductor spending in 2010 reached a massive US$11.4 billion, but would be 10.3 trillion won (US$9 billion) in 2011. Despite the reduction, Samsung would remain the highest spender in the industry in 2011, despite increased spending from Intel and TSMC this year.
Semiconductor spending is shifting away from memory to system LSI, an indication of the emphasis being placed on logic and foundry segments. A total of approximately US $5.2 billion has been allocated to memory and approximately US$3.8 billion to system LSI.
Samsung executives noted continued focus on the tablet and mobile phone markets in 2011, supporting NAND flash memory and logic IC capacity and technology migration expenditures.