Jason Wang, co-president for Taiwan-based foundry United Microelectronics (UMC), will fly to South Korea with a team of 10 staff on July 31 to meet Samsung Electronics' newly-appointed management aiming to secure order commitments from the IDM vendor, according to industry sources.
Samsung is already among the LTA customers of UMC, and the pure-play foundry internally remains upbeat about long-term order commitments from the South Korea-based vendor, the sources said.
Samsung has reportedly decelerated significantly its chip and component purchases for TVs and smartphones, such as display driver IC purchases from its Taiwan-based suppliers including Novatek Microelectronics and Himax Technologies.
Samsung has yet to revise its LTA contract with UMC, the sources claimed. With Samsung focusing more on advanced process manufacturing in-house, UMC is pinpointed as among the main beneficiaries of the increased outsourcing by the South Korean IDM.
Samsung has placed long-term orders for ISP (image signal processor) chips demanding UMC's 28nm process manufacturing, the sources said. The IDM vendor also has already contracted the Taiwan-based foundry to fabricate CMOS image sensors.
UMC has reported impressive sales and profit results for the first half of 2022 and expects its fabs to stay fully utilized in the third quarter.
Some market observers have still expressed doubts about whether falling demand for DDIs and other mass-market chips will affect negatively UMC's operations later this year or in early 2023.
Article translated by Jessie Shen
