End of a chip boom? Memory chip price drop spooks investors

Seoul

AFTER a blistering year-and-a-half-long surge, a sudden drop in some memory chip prices - followed by Samsung Electronics' disappointing profit estimate - is causing jitters among investors who had bet that the chip boom would last at least another year.

Amid news that the market has started losing some steam - prices of high-end flash memory chips, which are widely used in smartphones, dropped nearly 5 per cent in the fourth quarter - some analysts now expect the industry's growth rate will fall by more than half this year to 30 per cent.