Korean memory chip exports to Taiwan surge over 225% in H1

Industry

Korean memory chip exports to Taiwan surge over 225% in H1

Published: 11 Aug. 2024, 18:36

Containers stacked up at a port in Busan. [NEWS1]

Korea's memory chip exports to Taiwan surged over 225 percent in the first half from a year earlier on robust demand for high-performance high bandwidth memory (HBM) products sparked by the fast growth of the global artificial intelligence (AI) market, data showed Sunday.

Outbound shipments of memory chips to Taiwan reached $4.26 billion in the first six months of this year, up 225.7 percent from a year ago, far outperforming the country's overall increase of memory chip exports at 88.7 percent, according to data compiled by the industry ministry and the Korea International Trade Association.

Taiwan was the third-largest importer of Korean memory chips in the period, up two notches to outstrip Vietnam and the United States.

Market watchers say the sudden surge in exports to Taiwan is attributable to major Korean chipmaker SK hynix's HBM supply to U.S. AI chip giant Nvidia, which packages its AI accelerators at Taiwan's TSMC.

SK hynix is the only Korean company currently supplying HBM products, a core component of AI accelerators, to Nvidia.

"We can assume the sharp increase in exports is related to SK hynix's supplies for TSMC's final packaging [of AI accelerators]," Kim Yang-paeng, a researcher at the Korea Institutes for Industrial Economics & Trade, said.

Last month, the Korean chipmaker said in an earnings call its HBM sales soared more than 250 percent on year in the second quarter, noting it expects a 300 percent increase in HBM revenue in 2024 from the previous year.

Yonhap