Nanox, an Israeli medical imaging technology company, announced that they have opened a new semiconductor chip manufacturing facility in South Korea on April 6.
Nanox will develop key semiconductor microchips – the subject of many supply issues: producing digital X-rays for their 3D medical imaging systems, which reduces costs compared to traditional analog X-rays and can bring X-rays to countries where X-rays are not yet widely available.
“In the midst of a global supply chain crisis, the new facility enables Nanox to produce our own supply of Nanox.ARC’s indispensable semiconductor chips,” said Erez Meltzer, Nanox CEO. “Our new manufacturing facility is an important part of our vertical integration strategy to ensure that we can provide globally connected medical imaging solutions and potentially meaningfully expand healthcare delivery.”
Dr. Ilung Kim, head of Nanox Korea, said, “We are proud to be on track to open this facility, which reflects our technical expertise and know-how in manufacturing technologies that we believe will revolutionize medical imaging. With our proximity to the SK Hynix semiconductor cluster, we believe we are also well positioned to bring new, highly skilled jobs to the Yongin area.”
The facility’s opening ceremony featured remarks from Nanox’s leadership team, including Meltzer and Kim.
“Establishing a manufacturing facility in South Korea is a major step for Nanox,” said Akiva Tor, Israel’s ambassador to South Korea, who attended the facility’s opening ceremony. “It is the perfect combination of Korean investment, Israeli innovation, and Korean manufacturing.”
Next, we look at South Korea’s market share.
Market research firm Gartner said on April 17 that sales in the global semiconductor market grew 26.3 percent to $594,952 million in 2021, when the top 10 companies in the industry had a global market share of 54.6 percent.
According to it, Samsung Electronics topped the list with a 12.3 percent market share, and its industry sales grew 28 percent to $73.197 billion. The company outperformed Intel and jumped to the top of the list in three years. Last year, Intel’s sales in the industry fell 0.3 percent to $72.536 billion, with a 12.2 percent market share.
SK Hynix sales grew 40.6 percent to $36.352 billion and ranked third with a 6.1 percent share, followed by Micron Technology ($28.624 billion, 4.8 percent), Qualcomm ($27.093 billion, 4.6 percent), and Broadcom ($1.879 billion), 3.2 percent).
AMD ranked tenth with $16,299 million, up 68.6 percent year-over-year. MediaTek (seventh, $17.617 billion) and Nvidia (ninth) saw annual sales growth of 60.2 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
By country, South Korea accounted for 19.3 percent of the global market last year, while China’s market share fell from 6.7 percent to 6.5 percent. By market segment, automotive semiconductors grew 34.9%, memory chips grew 33.2%, accounting for 27.9% of total market sales, and wireless communications grew 24.6%.
With 19.3% of the global semiconductor market, South Korea is one of the key countries in the global semiconductor industry, thus attracting countries around the world to build factories here.
