Dec. 04, 2000

South Korean PC companies are trying to end Taiwan's dominance in the world's PC manufacturing markets, local media reported. Taiwan currently tops all competition with a 47% share of the global market.

Most major international brand companies rely heavily on Taiwan. South Korean manufacturers hope to take some of these OEM contracts to increase their share. They are racing to build facilities accordingly. For the whole of 2000, they expect to produce 13.6 million PCs for a 10% share of the global market. By 2001, their production volume might touch 18 million pieces.

According to sources from Seoul, Korea's most prominent brand Samsung alone has projected an output of 2.15 million computers for this year, up more than 800,000 pieces from last year. So far, Samsung mainly exported to Europe, but for 2001 plans to expand exports to North and South America. According to present planning, Samsung will manufacture handheld PCs in addition to desktops. Total volume of 2001 is forecasted to exceed three million pieces.

LG this year manufactured 2.3 million iMacs for Apple. Including its shipments to IBM, production should exceed 2.6 million pieces, as compared to 1.9 million in 1999.

Trigem has production plants in China and Europe and it recently finished construction of a second factory in South Korea. The company expects to produce 5.9 million pieces per year, but has capacity for up to 11.2 pieces per year.

Small to medium-sized manufacturers such as KDS and Hyunju started manufacturing PCs relatively late, but they are also actively expanding foreign operations.