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Samsung to lift chip spending
SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- Technology giant Samsung Electronics Co has revealed plans to spend $257 million on upgrading semiconductor production lines. The move comes as its rivals slash budgets due to slow recovery in the chip sector. "We plan to spend 200.2 billion won in expanding and upgrading lines for non-memory products such as smart cards and image sensors and spend an additional 104.9 billion won in expanding memory chip assembly lines," the South Korean company told the Korea Stock Exchange on Tuesday. The spending is part of six trillion won ($5 billion) the world's top memory-chip maker put aside for 2003 capital spending, up from 4.2 trillion won it spent last year. Five trillion won ($4.2 billion) of the 2003 budget is to go into its semiconductor business, exceeding the $3.9 billion that the world's largest chip maker, Intel Corp, plans to spend this year. Showing a profitSamsung is the only major memory-chip maker showing profits. Rivals such as Micron Technology of the United States and South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc are suffering from a prolonged slump in chip prices. The company said its investment would be made in the first half of this year to prepare for expected increase in demand for flash memory and DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips. DRAM is a memory unit that temporarily reads and stores data and is mainly used as a computer's main memory during its operation. The devices store computer programs in active memory for quick access by the microprocessor, the brain of a computer. Samsung, which represents nearly 20 percent of the broader Korean stock market, closed 6.5 percent lower at 289,500 won Tuesday on downbeat forecasts for chip prices and a missile launch by North Korea. In early trade Wednesday Samsung is trading 0.35 percent lower at 288,500 won. Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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