October 24, 2001 – Seoul, South Korea – South Korea’s semiconductor sector is expected to make a recovery in the second half of next year, Samsung Electronics said earlier this week.

In a conference call for domestic and foreign institutional investors, Samsung forecast that the global semiconductor market will see balanced supply and demand by 3Q02 and a supply shortage in the fourth quarter of 2002.

Samsung, however, does not intend to reduce production at present and has increased output of Rambus DRAM chips by up to 1,000/month, the company said.

Samsung said it plans to inject about 4.7 trillion won (approximately US$3.6 billion) into its semiconductor sector this year, down 2.5 trillion won from its earlier estimate.

In connection with Samsung’s reported bid to take over the memory-chip unit of Toshiba Corp., the company said it is “just in talks” with the Japanese firm, declining to unveil the details on the talks and clarify whether it has dropped the bid.

Meanwhile, the semiconductor manufacturer said that from September, demand for its thin film transistor-liquid crystal display products has been increasing and the price of those products is likely to recover in November.

Good performances in its communication and digital media sectors contributed to lightening the losses incurred by the struggling semiconductor sector, the company said.