A bombshell report from the Bank of America has just demolished the fallacy that new memory supply is just around the proverbial corner, with SK hynix now likely to bring online just around one-sixth of its initially envisaged production capacity additions by 2028.
According to a Taiwanese memory chip industry insider, Samsung and SK hynix will only be able to bring their massive new fabs at Gwangju and Jeolla fully online after a decade
We already know that South Korea's President, Lee Jae-myung, wants the country's memory capacity doubled by 2030, and has touted massive new fabs that Samsung and SK hynix are constructing at Gwangju and Jeolla in the southwestern part of the country as evidence to support his uber-optimistic call.
Now, however, a South Korean publication has just quoted recent analysis from the Bank of America to postulate that these figures that are commonly bandied about are unrealistic, especially within the proposed timelines.
Firstly, after accounting for capacity reductions from the closure of older plants due to technology upgrades and process miniaturization, South Korea will only be able to increase its operating memory wafer capacity by less than 10 percent per year, which means that total capacity additions by 2030 will fall far short of the 2030 goal set by the country's president.
In fact, according to a Taiwanese memory chip industry insider, SK hynix might only be able to add just one-sixth of its originally planned capacity additions by 2028.
Secondly, it'll take around five years just to build memory fab foundations at Gwangju and Jeolla, with another three to four years required for setting up clean rooms and the requisite chip fabrication equipment. Building the entire fabrication ecosystem at these sites will probably take upwards of ten years!
These delays will only fuel the class-action lawsuit against Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron
Meanwhile, as we reported recently, Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron were collectively sued on June 25 in a California federal court over allegations of collusion and price-fixing. The lawsuit aims to represent a class of consumers and businesses who've purchased products containing commodity DRAM during the recent price surge.
The lawsuit contends that Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron leveraged their apex position within the global DRAM market to bring about a coordinated "pivot" to AI-critical High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM), using this strategic realignment as an excuse to curtail the production of older memory formats such as the DDR3 and DDR4.
If, however, SK hynix is only slated to add just one-sixth of its originally planned memory production capacity by 2028, we fail to visualize any scenario where this glacial pace might help rescue the so-called 'Big Three' during court proceedings.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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