By Kate Yuan

South Korean semiconductor companies’ market share in China - the world's largest chip market - has dropped since 2019, when the U.S. began to restrict supply for China, according to the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI).

Business Korea reported the information by FKI on April 26, saying that Huawei stopped buying South Korean-made memory chips due to the restrictions. In addition, the memory chip prices fell last year, and China's import of South Korean memory chips declined by 13.7% than in 2018.

Business Korea said that memory chips account for the largest share of South Korean companies' products. As supplies are constrained, China increased import of non-memory chips and reduce import of memory chips.

In 2021, China's semiconductor import surged by no less than 37.2% year on year, while South Korea's growth rate was only 6.5%. At the same time, the market share of South Korean companies in China’s mainland fell from 24.7% in 2018 to 19.2% in 2021.

The report also said that the Korean government's subsidies to semiconductor companies were far lower than those in other regions. For example, the sales subsidy ratios of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix (as of June 2020) were only 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. However, the number reached 6.6% for SMIC, 5% for Huahong Group, 4% for Tsinghua Unigroup, 3.8% for Micron Technology, 3% for TSMC and Qualcomm, and 2.2% for Intel.