According to Reuters, Samsung is gearing up to increase the chip production capacity at its P3 factory in Pyeongtaek in South Korea, despite the fact that there's a general slowdown in the semiconductor industry, in addition to the general economic downturn. Samsung is apparently planning on adding 12-inch wafer capacity for DRAM, while also adding more 4 nm chip capacity. The P3 fab kicked off production of Samsung's most cutting-edge NAND flash chips earlier this year and is the company's largest fab overall. According to Reuters, Samsung is aiming to add at least 10 new EUV machines in 2023.

In related news via The Elec, Samsung has seen costs increase significantly when it comes to materials costs relating to the expansion of the P3 fab. So far, the company has racked up extra costs of over a trillion korean Won, or more than US$786 million, largely due to all of its contractors having raised their prices. The report also mentioned that some parts of the expansion of the P3 fab has been delayed by as much as a year, which isn't good news for Samsung and it likely means that the company will see further increases in costs before the expansions are finished.

YMTC, the Chinese DRAM and NAND flash company that recently announced a 232-layer 3D NAND flash memory that threatened to disrupt entrenched players Samsung, Micron Technology, Kioxia, and SK Hynix, has been blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, forcing American consumer electronics and PC manufacturers to stop sourcing from the company. Capitalizing on just this, Samsung raised prices of its NAND flash memory chips by as much as 10%, according to a DigiTimes report.

YMTC peaked when Apple struck a NAND flash supply deal with the company in 2020, which would see its storage devices power pretty much every Apple product you can think of, however, under political pressure, Apple withdrew from this deal in 2022. The Department of Commerce contention has been to that YMTC has access to cutting-edge technology, and is backed by Chinese state-capacity, which can help it drive out competitors. All is not well between the U.S. and China geopolitically, either. Samsung's 10% increase in the first half of December 2022 concerns spot-pricing, which could mean its contract pricing (usually used by customers placing very large orders), could be different. It is conceivable that the exit of YMTC from the U.S. market could raise NAND flash product prices across the board.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced the development of its 16-gigabit (Gb) DDR5 DRAM built using the industry's first 12-nanometer (nm)-class process technology, as well as the completion of product evaluation for compatibility with AMD. "Our 12 nm-range DRAM will be a key enabler in driving market-wide adoption of DDR5 DRAM," said Jooyoung Lee, Executive Vice President of DRAM Product & Technology at Samsung Electronics. "With exceptional performance and power efficiency, we expect our new DRAM to serve as the foundation for more sustainable operations in areas such as next-generation computing, data centers and AI-driven systems."

"Innovation often requires close collaboration with industry partners to push the bounds of technology," said Joe Macri, Senior VP, Corporate Fellow and Client, Compute and Graphics CTO at AMD. "We are thrilled to once again collaborate with Samsung, particularly on introducing DDR5 memory products that are optimized and validated on "Zen" platforms."

According to TrendForce's research, the total revenue of the global top 10 foundries rose by 6% QoQ to US$35.21 billion for 3Q22 as the release of the new iPhone series during the second half of the year generated significant stock-up activities across Apple's supply chain. However, the global economy shows weak performances, and factors such as China's policy on containing COVID-19 outbreaks and high inflation continue to impact consumer confidence. As a result, peak-season demand in the second half of the year has been underwhelming, and inventory consumption is proceeding slower than anticipated. This situation has led to substantial downward corrections to foundry orders as well. For 4Q22, TrendForce forecasts that the total revenue of the global top 10 foundries will register a QoQ decline, thereby terminating the boom of the past two years—when there was an uninterrupted trend of QoQ revenue growth.

Regarding individual foundries' performances in 3Q22, the group of the top five was led by TSMC, followed by Samsung, UMC, GlobalFoundries, and SMIC. Their collective global market share (in revenue terms) came to 89.6%. Most foundries were directly impacted by clients slowing down their stock-up activities or significantly correcting down their orders. Only TSMC was able to make a notable gain due to Apple's strong stock-up demand for the SoCs deployed in this year's new iPhone models. TSMC saw its revenue rise by 11.1% QoQ to US$20.16 billion, and the corresponding market share expanded to 56.1%. The growth was mainly attributed to the ≤7 nm nodes, whose share in the foundry's revenue had kept climbing and reached 54% in the third quarter. Conversely, Samsung actually experienced a slight QoQ drop of 0.1% in foundry revenue even though it had also benefited from the component demand related to the new iPhone series. Partially impacted by the weakening of the Korean won, Samsung's market share fell to 15.5%.

According to TrendForce's latest research, global smartphone production totaled around 289 million units for 3Q22, showing a slight QoQ drop of 0.9% and a YoY drop of 11%. The smartphone market thus exhibited an extremely weak demand situation as the "iron law" of positive growth in the third quarter was broken after being in effect for years. The contraction of smartphone production during this year's peak season was mainly attributed to smartphone brands giving priority to consumption of channel inventory for whole devices and maintaining a fairly conservative production plan for 3Q22. Moreover, they had kept lowering their production targets due to strong global economic headwinds.

Regarding the performances of the major smartphone brands in 3Q22, Samsung posted around 64.2 million units in device production, showing a QoQ increase of just 3.9%. This was the result of the brand scaling back production since 2Q22 and maintaining a conservative outlook on the future market situation. Due to persistent inventory pressure, Samsung is expected to again post a QoQ decline for 4Q22. In the aspect of product development, Samsung has been the leader in foldable smartphones. This year, the global market share of foldable smartphones is estimated to reach 1.1%; and within this segment, Samsung is expected to hold a market share of almost 90%. As for 2023, the global market share of foldable smartphones is forecasted to climb to 1.5%, and Samsung is forecasted to retain a market share of almost 80% in the segment.

TrendForce reports that the recent easing of tight supply for components has led to rising shipments for enterprise servers. Furthermore, ODMs for the most part have been able to sustain the momentum of data center build-out with the demand from ByteDance and the tenders issued by Chinese telecom companies. Nevertheless, the performance of the enterprise SSD market on the whole has been impacted by falling NAND Flash prices. For 3Q22, the NAND Flash industry's enterprise SSD revenue dropped by 28.7% QoQ to US$5.22 billion. Furthermore, all enterprise SSD suppliers recorded a negative performance for the period as well.

Regarding individual enterprise SSD suppliers' revenue figures for 3Q22, Samsung posted around US$2.12 billion. Its market share also shrank to 40.6% from 44.5% in 2Q22. Samsung's performance was mainly dragged down by the decline in its NAND Flash ASP. In the aspect of product development, SSDs featuring 128L NAND Flash and PCIe 4.0 will remain Samsung's main offerings for enterprise storage during 2023.

This year has seen the arrival of a lot of Thunderbolt connected monitors and Samsung is joining the fray with a new model, the ViewFinity S8UT. The 27-inch 4K IPS monitor is very much an office model, as it only has a 60 Hz refresh rate with a 5 ms response time (GtG). The panel is edge lit and has a typical brightness of 350 cd/m² and a contrast ratio of 1000:1. The monitor supports Picture-by-Picture and Picture-in-Picture, courtesy of multiple inputs.

The interesting part of this monitor is the Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, as the main port can output 90 W for charging a connected laptop, while the secondary port can deliver 15 W. The monitor supports Thunderbolt daisy chaining, which isn't a common feature on monitors. The S8UT also sports an HDMI 2.0 port, a three port USB 3.0 hub, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a 3.5 mm headphone socket, as well as a pair of integrated stereo speakers. The stand supports pivot, swivel, tilt and height adjustment. The S8UT comes with a three year warranty, but there's currently no word on pricing.

The next-generation GDDR7 memory standard is shaping up nicely, to double bandwidth and density over the current GDDR6. In a company presentation detailing upcoming memory technologies, Samsung revealed that GDDR7 uses PAM3 signalling. While ones and zeroes are stored in DRAM memory cells, it is transmitted between devices (such as the DRAM chip and the GPU) in electrical waveforms known as "signals." Ones and zeroes are interpreted by patterns in the signal waveform.

Conventional GDDR6 memory uses NRZ (non-return to zero) or PAM2 signalling to achieve data-rates starting from 14 Gbps, with 24 Gbps expected to be the fastest production GDDR6 memory speed on offer, however some of the faster GDDR6 speeds such as 18 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and 22 Gbps couldn't hit production soon enough for the development phase of the GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" GPU, and so NVIDIA and Micron Technology co-developed the GDDR6X standard leveraging PAM4 signalling, to offer speeds ranging between 18 Gbps to 23 Gbps (or higher) several quarters ahead of this faster JEDEC-standard GDDR6.

As advanced graphics and display technologies develop, they are blurring the lines between metaverse and our everyday experience. Much of this important shift is being made possible by the advancement of memory solutions designed for graphics products. One of the biggest challenges for improving virtual reality is taking the complexities of real-world objects and environments and recreating them in a virtual space. Doing so requires massive memory and increased computing power. At the same time, the benefits of creating more true-to-life metaverse will be far reaching, including real-life simulations of complicated scenarios and more, sparking innovation across a number of industries.

This is the central idea behind one of the most popular concepts in virtual reality: digital twin. A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or space. Updated in real-time in accordance with the actual environment, a digital twin spans the lifecycle of its source and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making. While until recently this was not feasible proposition due to limitations on data processing and transference, digital twins are now gaining traction thanks to availability of high bandwidth technologies.

Market intelligence firm TrendForce reports that the whole NAND Flash market was severely weakened by plummeting demand in 3Q22. Because shipments of end products including consumer electronics and servers had been below expectations, the overall NAND ASP fell by 18.3% QoQ. Furthermore, the general economic outlook remained pessimistic, so enterprises across many sectors started to scale back their capital expenditure plans and halted the momentum of their procurement activities. Due to this development, the problem of excess inventory eventually spread to NAND Flash suppliers. The pressure on suppliers to make sales was ratcheted up dramatically. According to TrendForce's investigation, NAND Flash bit shipments fell by 6.7% QoQ for 3Q22, and the overall NAND Flash ASP also kept sliding. On account of the unfavorable market situation, the NAND Flash industry recorded a total revenue of around US$13.71 billion for 3Q22. The QoQ revenue decline reached as much as 24.3%.

The ranking of NAND Flash suppliers by revenue saw two notable changes for 3Q22. First, SK Group moved down to third place as it suffered the largest revenue drop among suppliers. Its revenue slipped by 29.8% QoQ to US$2.54 billion mainly due to the significant deterioration of the demand for PCs and smartphones. Its subsidiary Solidigm was also affected by the slowdown in server procurements. Previously, servers had a fairly stable demand situation compared with other kinds of end products. However, server demand eventually buckled in 3Q22 as result of enterprises cutting capital expenditure and undergoing a period of inventory correction. Compared with 2Q22, SK Group (that encompasses SK hynix and Solidigm) posted a drop of 11.1% in bit shipments and an even steeper decline of more than 20% in ASP.

Samsung Electronics announced exciting new ways for gamers to experience game streaming with the addition of new partners and the introduction of game streaming to select 2021 Samsung TV models and 4K games, further delivering on its promise of bringing the future of gaming to consumers across the globe.

Antstream Arcade is the world's largest cloud gaming service that provides players access to over 1,500 iconic games and weekly new multiplayer challenges and tournaments. Select Samsung TV owners will soon be able to battle their friends and the global community at the best games from the 80s, 90s and 00s, from Pac-Man to Mortal Kombat and Metal Slug.

Global market intelligence firm TrendForce reports that for 3Q22, the revenue of the whole DRAM industry dropped by 28.9% QoQ to US$18.19 billion. This decline is the second largest to the one that the industry experienced in 2008, when the global economy was rocked by a major financial crisis. Regarding the state of the DRAM market in 3Q22, the QoQ decline in contract prices widened to the range of 10~15% as the demand for consumer electronics continued to shrink. Server DRAM shipments, which had been on a relatively stable trend compared with shipments of other types of DRAM products, also slowed down noticeably from the previous quarter as buyers began adjusting their inventory levels.

Turning to individual DRAM suppliers' performances in 3Q22, the top three suppliers (i.e., Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron) all exhibited a QoQ drop in revenue. Samsung posted US$7.40 billion and a QoQ drop of 33.5%, which was the largest among the top three. SK hynix's revenue fell by 25.2% QoQ to around US$5.24 billion. As for Micron, its revenue came to around US$4.81 billion. Since Micron marks its fiscal quarters differently, its DRAM ASP showed a QoQ decline that was smaller than the ones suffered by the two Korean suppliers. And as a result of this, Micron's QoQ revenue decline was also the smallest among the top three. TrendForce points out that the top three are still maintaining a relatively high operating margin at this moment. Nevertheless, the inventory correction period that has started this year will last through the first half of next year, so they will experience a continuing squeeze on profit.

It appears that the competition is heating up, well, at least when it comes to who is going to be first to launch a 27-inch OLED-type panel, as Samsung is now considering doing its own 27-inch OLED-type panels, following rumours about LG considering its own 27-inch OLED-type panels. The details are from UBI Research via the Elec and based on what's being reported, Samsung was initially going to release an RGB OLED based 27-inch panel, but the company wasn't quite there research wise. However, Samsung allegedly went for QD-OLED instead and the article claims it's more profitable for Samsung.

That said, it seems like Samsung will try to win over Apple as its first customer for the panels, rather than launching them under its own brand. The panels are said to be manufactured in a brand new plant using Gen 8 OLED substrates, which means that these panels will be produced in a cutting edge facility. 27-inches also appears to be the smallest size QD-OLED panels we can expect, at least for now, as smaller size panels will use what is referred to as two stack tandem RGB OLED panels. These will be used in notebooks and other smaller devices. Samsung is currently producing single stack RGB OLED panels that are used in phones.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, as promised at Flash Memory Summit 2022 and Samsung Memory Tech Day 2022, announced today that it has begun mass producing a 1-terabit (Tb) triple-level cell (TLC) eighth-generation Vertical NAND (V-NAND) with the industry's highest bit density. At 1 Tb, the new V-NAND also features the highest storage capacity to date, enabling larger storage space in next-generation enterprise server systems worldwide.

"As market demand for denser, greater-capacity storage pushes for higher V-NAND layer counts, Samsung has adopted its advanced 3D scaling technology to reduce surface area and height, while avoiding the cell-to-cell interference that normally occurs with scaling down," said SungHoi Hur, Executive Vice President of Flash Product & Technology at Samsung Electronics. "Our eighth-generation V-NAND will help meet rapidly growing market demand and better position us to deliver more differentiated products and solutions, which will be at the very foundation of future storage innovations."

Over the past few weeks, the legal dispute between Arm Ltd. and Qualcomm Inc. has been warming up the eyes of the entire tech community. However, as per the latest court filing, Arm could change its licensing strategy and shift its whole business model into a new direction that would benefit the company directly. Currently, the company provides the intellectual property (IP) that chip makers can use and add to designs mixed with other IPs and custom in-house solutions. That is how the world of electronics design (EDA) works and how many companies operate. However, in the Qualcomm-Arm legal battle, Qualcomm's counterclaim has brought new light about Arm's plans for licensing its hardware designs past 2024.

According to Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, who examined court documents, Arm will reportedly change terms to use its IP where the use of other IP mixed with Arm IP is prohibited. If a chip maker plans to use Arm CPU IP, they must also use Arm's GPU/NPU/ISP/DSP IPs. This would result in devices that utilize every design the UK-based designer has to offer, and other IP makers will have to exclude their designs from the SoC. By doing this, Arm directly stands against deals like the Samsung-AMD deal, where AMD provides RDNA GPU IP and would force Samsung to use Arm's Mali GPU IP instead. This change should take effect in 2025 when every new license agreement has to comply with new rules.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that its latest LPDDR5X DRAM with the industry's fastest speed of 8.5 gigabits per second (Gbps) was validated for use on Snapdragon mobile platforms. By optimizing a high-speed signal environment between application processor and memory, Samsung has surpassed the previous maximum speed of 7.5 Gbps achieved in March, reaffirming its leadership in the memory market.

As a global leader in the mobile DRAM market for more than a decade, Samsung has been driving mainstream adoption of high-end smartphones, enabling many more consumers to experience powerful computing performance on their mobile devices. Thanks to its low-power and high-performance characteristics, LPDDR DRAM is quickly becoming pervasive in modern computing systems, expanding beyond smartphones and into PCs, high-performance computing (HPC), servers and automobiles, where it has enjoyed robust growth in the last few years.

Stock prices of major semiconductor foundry companies such as TSMC and Samsung took a major beating on Monday. TSMC, Taiwan's premier foundry, sees its share prices drop by 7.1%, its lowest since Q1 2021. Samsung Electronics dropped by as much as 3.9%, and SK Hynix by 3.5%. Bloomberg reports that the selloffs in Asian markets may have been triggered by traders returning on Monday from a week's holiday reacting to fresh curbs on semiconductor sales to China by the Biden administration. The publication also remarks that global tech stocks have had their worst month since the October 2008.

"The latest U.S. move would prompt China to move faster in fostering the domestic chip industry," said Omdia analyst Akira Minamikawa. "Japanese firms should continue trading with Chinese firms with goods not restricted because the business is business. But they should be ready for a future--maybe in a decade or two--when they lose all the Chinese customers as a result of the current tension dialing up speed of the Chinese efforts."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today showcased a series of cutting-edge semiconductor solutions set to drive digital transformation through the decade, at Samsung Tech Day 2022. An annual conference since 2017, the event returned to in-person attendance at the Signia by Hilton San Jose hotel after three years.

This year's event, attended by more than 800 customers and partners, featured presentations from Samsung's Memory and System LSI business leaders—including Jung-bae Lee, President and Head of Memory Business; Yong-In Park, President and Head of System LSI Business; and Jaeheon Jeong, Executive Vice President and Head of Device Solutions (DS) Americas Office—on the company's latest advancements and its vision for the future.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today a strengthened business strategy for its Foundry Business with the introduction of cutting-edge technologies at its annual Samsung Foundry Forum event. With significant market growth in high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), 5/6G connectivity and automotive applications, demand for advanced semiconductors has increased dramatically, making innovation in semiconductor process technology critical to the business success of foundry customers. To that end, Samsung highlighted its commitment to bringing its most advanced process technology, 1.4-nanometer (nm), for mass production in 2027.

During the event, Samsung also outlined steps its Foundry Business is taking in order to meet customers' needs, including: foundry process technology innovation, process technology optimization for each specific applications, stable production capabilities, and customized services for customers. "The technology development goal down to 1.4 nm and foundry platforms specialized for each application, together with stable supply through consistent investment are all part of Samsung's strategies to secure customers' trust and support their success," said Dr. Si-young Choi, president and head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. "Realizing every customer's innovations with our partners has been at the core of our foundry service."

The economic downturn keeps pushing the PC and related manufacturing markets down, following slumps in demand stemming from increased cost of living, the veritable arms race to technological products during COVID-19, and manufacturer's efforts to increase output to provide enough product to meet said demand. But all that goes up must eventually come down, and now South Korean manufacturers are facing the result of months of decreased consumption, with stock levels increasing ahead of actual product uptake (stocks have reached 67.3% of produced goods and factory shipments have declined 20.4%). This has now led to a 1.7% decline in August's output when compared to the same period last year - the first time the South Korean industry has seen negative growth since 2018.

Samsung and Kioxia both have announced a reduction in production output in the months to come, which should give distribution enough time to clear some of the accumulated inventory. The scales of production typically occur in cycles - ones with excess manufacturing against demand, and other times where the reverse happens. It seems we're now in the descending part of the spectrum, with prices - especially of NAND - being expected to drop in the coming months. It will take a while until the manufacturing reduction makes itself felt in the overall IC pricing landscape. Micron too has announced it's slowing down the production ramp-up of its 232-layer 3D NAND so as not to contribute in excess towards an already over-saturated market.

According to the latest TrendForce research, shipments of gaming monitors are in decline for the first time since the product category was launched to market, with 2022 estimates lowered to 20.5 million units, a 10% drop YoY. The primary reasons for this downgrade are intensifying inflation in Europe and spiking interest rates in North America which have upset and displaced demand for consumer electronics products. In addition, delays in launching high-end graphics cards has also led some e-sports consumers to consider postponing purchases.

According to TrendForce, judging from the market share of flat and curved gaming monitors, curved gaming surfaces accounted for approximately 41% of the market in 2021. In 2022, this share will increase to 44% and is expected to have a chance to reach 46% in 2023. In addition to an increased supply of curved monitor panels and their high price-performance ratio, growth in the market share of Ultra-Wide products is also one of the reasons for the rise of curved products.

According to TrendForce research, due to steady weakening of overall demand for consumer electronics, inventory pressure has increased among downstream distributors and brands. Although there are still sporadic shortages of specific components, the curtain has officially fallen on a two-year wave of shortages in general, and brands have gradually suspended stocking in response to changes in market conditions. However, stable demand for automotive and industrial equipment is key to supporting the ongoing growth of foundry output value. At the same time, since the creation of a marginal amount of new capacity in 2Q22 led to growth in wafer shipments and a price hike for certain wafers, this drove output value among top ten foundries to reach US$33.20 billion in 2Q22. Quarterly growth fell to 3.9% on a weakening consumer market.

A prelude to inventory correction was officially revealed in 3Q22. In addition to intensifying severity in the initial wave of order slashing for LDDI/TDDI, and TV SoC, diminishing order volume also extended to non-Apple smartphone APs and peripheral IC PMIC, CIS, and consumer electronics PMICs, and mid-to-low-end MCUs, posing a challenge for foundry capacity utilization. However, the launch of the new iPhone in 3Q22 is expected to prop up a certain amount of stocking momentum for the sluggish market. Therefore, top ten foundry revenue in 3Q22 is expected to maintain a growth trend driven by high-priced processes and quarterly growth rate is expected to be slightly higher than in 2Q22.

HARMAN International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets, today announced the acquisition of CAARESYS, an Israel-based company founded in 2017 that develops vehicle passenger monitoring systems powered by contactless, low-emission radar. CAARESYS has successfully partnered with leading OEMs and provides a mass production solution for cabin monitoring including vital signs sensing, passenger localization and Child Presence Detection (CPD).

The in-cabin radar sensor and algorithm solution from CAARESYS will strengthen HARMAN's automotive product offerings, building on the company's strong consumer-centric Digital Cockpit and ADAS solutions. With CAARESYS' contactless vital signs sensing and real-time insights from that information, HARMAN can now offer new levels of in-vehicle safety, comfort, and well-being in its growing product line.

Samsung Electronics will unveil the Odyssey OLED G8 (Model Name: G85SB)—another premium addition to the Odyssey lineup—at IFA 2022 in Berlin, Germany, further reinforcing the Odyssey's industry-leading position. The Odyssey OLED G8 is the company's first OLED gaming monitor and will be available in an ultra-thin, 34-inch form factor, delivering brilliant brightness on an OLED panel partnered with Quantum Dot Technology and packed full of premium gaming features including an incredibly low 0.1 ms response time and 175 Hz refresh rate.

The new 34-inch Odyssey OLED G8 is built to an ultra-slim thickness of 3.9 mm at its thinnest part—the slimmest in its product category—and finished with a sleek, metal frame. The monitor requires no backlighting, while delivering true RGB and true black for maximum color accuracy and brightness—all without a color filter. The lighting is controlled in pixels which can be expressed in black with a near-infinite contrast ratio.

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.