Micron gauges the damage after China’s sales ban, as South Korean firms stand to fill its void

Name: China imposes restrictions on US chip maker Micron, escalating tech war
Uploaded: 2023-05-23T14:00:12.000Z
Duration: 2 min 5 s
Description: China imposes restrictions on US chip maker Micron, escalating tech war

The ban’s impact on Micron will vary depending on how China defines critical information structure, says chief financial officer Mark Murphy

Without Micron products, Chinese companies are likely to turn to South Korean chip makers like Samsung and SK Hynix, analysts say

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The building where the facilities of US semiconductor giant Micron is located in Shanghai. Photo: AFP

Dylan Butts

Published: 10:00pm, 23 May 2023Updated: 3:18pm, 25 May 2023

Corrected [3:12pm, 25 May, 2023]

[3:12pm, 25 May, 2023]
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Micron had a 28 per cent market share of DRAM chips in China in the first quarter of 2023, while Samsung held 43 per cent.The numbers, in fact, refer to the companies' global market shares.

Micron Technology, the largest US memory chip maker, is assessing its losses following a partial sales ban of its products in China, as South Korean firms like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix stand to benefit from its absence.

The impact of the ban on Micron will depend on the details of Beijing’s restrictions, such as its definition of critical information infrastructure operators (CIIOs), which have been prohibited from buying the company’s products, said Micron’s chief financial officer, Mark Murphy, at a JPMorgan conference in Boston on Monday.

02:05

China imposes restrictions on US chip maker Micron, escalating tech war

“We are currently estimating a range of impact in the low single-digit percentage of our company’s total revenue at the low end, and high single-digit percentage of total company revenue at the high end,” he said.

Beijing on Sunday said products from the Boise, Idaho-based firm posed a “national security risk”, an allegation that the US commerce department said has “no basis in fact”. Micron has said it would maintain communications with Chinese authorities.

The Cyber Security Review Office under the Cyberspace Administration of China, which announced an investigation into Micron products in late March, did not disclose which products it reviewed or the methods it used to review them.

“We remain unclear as to what security concerns exist, and we’ve had no complaints from customers on the security of our products,” Murphy said. “We look forward to enabling our customer success in China within the confines of local laws and regulations.”

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