Samsung Foundry Forum in Silicon Valley postponed over pandemic

Samsung Electronics’ annual forums on its semiconductor foundry business strategy for this year have been postponed due to the new coronavirus pandemic, the tech giant said Monday.

The company posted the notice on its forum registration website.

The first event of the forums was to be held in California’s Silicon Valley on May 20 and was supposed to kick-start the annual forum series that takes place worldwide, including in China, Japan and Germany.

“The forums are pushed to the latter half of the year for now, but the company will continue monitoring the situation,” a Samsung official said.

Samsung has attracted hundreds of fabless customers to the forum to unveil its foundry technology road map and service strategy since 2016 as part of its efforts to expand the third-party chip production business.

Samsung is the second-biggest player in the global foundry market with a 17.8 percent share. The biggest, Taiwan’s TSMC, holds 52.7 percent.

The South Korean company started operating the most cutting-edge foundry production line equipped with extreme ultraviolet process technology in February.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)