Labour disputes creates an opening
The South Korean union at Samsung is furious over a gap in bonus pay with SK Hynix. It has planned an 18-day strike from 21 May 2026 if demands are not met.
Samsung Electronics shares fell as much as 9.3% on 15 May 2026. The decline follows a statement from the South Korean labour union confirming its commitment to a planned strike. This decision comes despite the company proposing to resume pay talks without conditions.
As Samsung and its union have failed to reach a pay deal this week, the company has urged for talks to resume. South Korea’s Labour Commission has also called for government-mediated talks on Saturday.
Analysts say rivals such as SK Hynix, Micron and TSMC could benefit from spill over demand as a prolonged strike could eventually weigh on the broader chip supply chain.
However, analysts also say this benefit may not last over the long term.
Dominating the HBM supply
SK Hynix currently commands the lion’s share of the HBM market, a specialised type of memory that stacks DRAM chips vertically. Its proximity to the GPU allows for lightning-fast data transfer speeds, which is essential for training large language models.
Without this specific hardware, the advanced chips produced by NVIDIA, Google and AMD would face severe performance throttling.
