According to the South Korean publication The Korea Economic Daily, in January this year, the management audit structure of Samsung Electronics took over the System LSI division, and will then begin to optimize the activities of the contract division Samsung Foundry. The latter, in light of TSMC’s recent activity, may change its mind about building new plants in the United States.
Image Source: Samsung Electronics
As is known, the project to build a new Samsung manufacturing complex in Texas is already being implemented with a delay relative to the original schedule, since it was previously believed that the first plant in Taylor would begin producing products last year, but this did not happen. Now the deadlines have been shifted to 2026, but in exchange, Samsung is ready to implement the production of more modern products at the plant. The company expected to invest $37 billion in the development of the complex in Taylor.
Concerns about the difficulty of finding enough customers for the future Texas plant have become the main reason why further implementation of the project may be suspended. While TSMC expresses confidence in its ability to attract enough orders for American plants and also promises to invest another $100 billion in their construction, Samsung cannot boast of similar successes in the contract market as a whole. Last quarter, the company occupied no more than 8.2% of the global market for such services, while TSMC could lay claim to as much as 67.1%.
If Samsung’s contract division can get its advanced manufacturing processes in order, it hopes to attract developers of chips for AI accelerators to its services. In the meantime, the company is assessing the feasibility of further financing not only its contract facilities in the U.S., but also some of its South Korean operations.
Another problem for Samsung is the lack of demand for its own Exynos processors. Since they failed to make it into the Samsung Galaxy S25 flagship smartphone line, this was a blow to the reputation of their developers. According to sources, Samsung is considering the possibility of transferring the Exynos development team from Samsung LSI to the MX division, which is directly involved in the production of smartphones and their development.
Samsung is not doing well in the image sensor market either. It is unlikely to compete with Sony in the smartphone segment, but the South Korean company has not lost hope of receiving new orders from Apple, as well as strengthening its position in the segment of camera components for robots and on-board autopilot systems in transport. Currently, Samsung controls no more than 20% of the global market for image sensors for digital cameras.