Taipei, July 1, 2010 (CENS)--PowerChip Semiconductor Corp. (PSC) Chairman Frank Huang recently estimated that global demand and supply of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips would stay unprecedentedly balanced until 2012.

Huang based his view on the assumption that the 2008-2009 global economic downturn had impacted the industry so badly that no DRAM chipmakers have announced any new factory plan until 2012 and their equipment upgrade projects would take considerable time as the equipment they had booked would arrive at least nine months later.

He added expansion stagnation would bring the industry a rarely wonderful time between 2010 and 2012.

Huang said although Samsung has already announced an aggressive expansion plan, the plan will be materialized only after 2012. He went on that it is hard to say Samsung will use the expansion to drive its Taiwanese rivals out of competition.

Huang said that Samsung would spend most of the announced US$9 billion budget on strengthening silicon-foundry and NAND manufacturing capability as well as niche-DRAM production using 38-nm process technology, leaving standard DRAM production unchanged. Besides, Samsung hopes to boost its share to 40% in world DRAM market from current 33%, bagging up a combined 60% with compatriot Hynix Semiconductor.

The top PSC executive pointed out that his company has repaid NT$35 billion (US$1 billion at US$1:NT$32) in loan in the first half of this year without financial aids.

The company plans to spend around NT$15 billion (US$468 million) by the end of this year on migrating to 45-nm process from 63-nm process in order to bring down production costs while boosting output.