SK Hynix has increased the cash portion of its profit-sharing bonus in a revised tentative wage agreement, after production workers rejected an earlier stock-heavy proposal by just 25 votes.
SK Hynix is targeting 2028 to apply High-NA extreme ultraviolet lithography to DRAM mass production and is considering joining an industry initiative to develop 12-inch photomasks, according to South Korea's fnnews. The company has separately confirmed both plans.
China's leading DRAM maker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has begun trial production of HBM3, but its initial yield has reportedly remained around 25%, highlighting the difficulty of translating its progress in conventional DRAM into high-performance AI memory.
Apple's expected first foldable iPhone is set to channel a significant share of its component value to South Korean suppliers, with Samsung Display (SDC), LG Innotek, Samsung Electro-Mechanics (Semco), Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix securing positions across displays, cameras, substrates, passive components, and memory.
Samsung Electronics has opened an advanced packaging research center in Yokohama, bringing development work closer to Japanese suppliers that provide critical materials and equipment for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) as the company works to narrow its market-share gap with SK Hynix.
Kioxia has ruled out deeper manufacturing ties with SK Hynix while resisting another round of aggressive NAND price increases, leaning instead on longer customer contracts and disciplined capacity expansion as data-center demand keeps memory supply tight.
China's rapid advance in DRAM is intensifying debate in South Korea over whether rigid working-hour rules could make it harder to preserve one of the country's remaining technology advantages over China.
