According to foreign media reports, the decline in demand for consumer electronics has led to a decline in demand for chips, especially memory chips, and demand and prices have declined. In the first 20 days of November, South Korea's chip exports were $5.28 billion, down 29.4% year-on-year, according to the latest data released by the South Korean Customs Agency. In addition to chips, South Korea's important exports include mobile devices such as smartphones, but the export value of this category of products in the first 20 days also fell 20.6% year-on-year to $1.36 billion.
There is also a memory chip, the price is constantly decreasing, but there are still not many people who buy, which has also brought an impact to Samsung and SK Hynix. According to Hynix, the price of DRAM chips for equipment and servers fell by about 20% in the third quarter compared with the second quarter, and the price of NAND flash memory chips for data storage fell by more than 20%. Hynix predicts that the industry will continue to be oversupplied in the short term, and with this in mind, the company has decided to reduce capital expenditure by more than 50% next year compared to this year. This year's investment scale is expected to reach the upper limit of the 10 trillion-20 trillion won range.
At the end of last month, Micron, a major US memory manufacturer, released its dismal fiscal 2022 Q4 earnings (as of September 1, 2022) and fiscal 2022 full-year earnings, and expressed unusually pessimistic expectations for the next fiscal quarter. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra bluntly said that customers in all walks of life are cutting orders, reducing the chip inventory they previously hoarded, and the chip industry is currently "in a difficult position" in terms of pricing. Mehrotra also said that future memory chip demand and company operations will face more serious difficulties, so the company will cut investment plans, including cutting capital expenditures for fab equipment by nearly 50% compared with last year