Samsung is in the news again – and you may be happy to hear it has nothing to do with combustible phones. Despite what you may have heard about the South Korean industrial giant’s economic hit in the wake of phone recalls, Samsung’s hardly tottering along.
To underscore that, this announcement: A $1 billion investment in their Austin operations, where they manufacture semiconductor chips. What’s the big idea?
Lilly Rockwell, business reporter for 512Tech, says Samsung’s investment is significant for their Austin operations, but not necessarily for the company.
“In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably a drop in the bucket for Samsung,” Rockwell says, “but for Austin, it’s a significant impact.”
Austin was the location for Samsung’s first manufacturing facility outside of South Korea. Today, most of their manufacturing facilities are still located in South Korea, so a lot of their employees in America are in Austin.
“Central Texas has a really long history of expertise in semiconductor manufacturing, going back decades,” Rockwell says. “Basically, there’s a lot of talent here.”
Rockwell says that though the $1 billion investment sounds like a lot, it’s not out of turn with Samsung’s previous investments in central Texas.
“I wouldn’t read too much into this in terms of, this means some resurgence in chip manufacturing in Texas or even in Central Texas,” Rockwell says. “I think this was a specific decision by Samsung which had already invested many of billions of dollars into this particular plant in the Austin area to go ahead and add to that investment.”
