South Korean semiconductor board makers are positioned to benefit from Taiwanese counterpart Unimicron’s fire in one of its factory.
Unimicron’s supply of flip chip chip scale package (FC-CSP) for application processes to Qualcomm will now be shifted to Samsung Electro-Mechanics, LG InnoTek and Daeduck Electronics as well as Taiwan’s Kinsus Interconnect Technology, people familiar with the matter said.
The four companies are close to signing a FC-CSP supply deal with Qualcomm, the people said.
Unimicron suffered a fire in October at its factory at Shanying in Taoyuan city. Shanying factory produce boards for Qualcomm and it is expected to take around a year for operations to return to normal.
Any delay in Qualcomm’s application processor production could also negatively affect Samsung Electronics’ smartphone production.
Shanying factory mostly produced FC-CSP for Qualcomm’s 5G AP. The factory posts around 160 billion won to 170 billion won in sales per year.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics is expected to add hundred billion wons in sales by supply to Qualcomm. The company’s margin from FC-CSP are reportedly in the double digits.
South Korean semiconductor board makers may also continue to supply their goods to Qualcomm even after Unimicron’s factory is repaired a year later.
Unimicron may very well convert the factory to produce flip chip ball grid array (FC-BGA) instead of FC-CSP for higher profitability. However, Japan’s Ibiden dominates the global FC-BGA market and Unimicron may very well just continue to produce FC-CSP.
