South Korea's HBM-Related Exports Hit $60.7B in First Seven Months; Taiwan and Malaysia Lead in Unit Price
nashnova research
Korea's multi-chip IC exports covering HBM reached $60.76 billion in the first seven months of 2026, up 154% year-on-year and already past full-year 2025; unit prices in Taiwan and Malaysia far exceed the average, pointing to advanced packaging capacity as the real value anchor.
What does $60.8 billion in seven months actually mean?
From January to July 2026, exports under Korea customs code 8542.32-3000 hit $60.76 billion, up 154% year-on-year — seven months already exceeding the $49.31 billion shipped in all of 2025.
This means → demand for HBM and related multi-chip products is still accelerating, not merely holding at a high level.
The pace, however, is uneven: Q1 came in at $20.21 billion, Q2 rose to $30.46 billion, but July alone fell 20.5% month-on-month to $10.09 billion — short-term volatility has arrived.
Where are these chips actually going?
The top three destinations account for 78.5% of the total: Taiwan at $23.68 billion (+93.2% YoY), Hong Kong at $18.23 billion (+282.2%), and mainland China at $5.79 billion (+152%).
Add Malaysia ($4.69 billion) and Vietnam ($4.05 billion), and the top five reach 92.9%.
This reflects an extremely concentrated supply-chain geography — nearly all HBM-related products flow to just five nodes.
Why does unit price matter more than total value here?
The all-destination average price runs about $77,600 per kilogram. Taiwan's average is roughly $219,400 — 2.8 times the mean. Malaysia is even higher at about $325,700, though shipment weight is only 14.4 tonnes and monthly data swings sharply.
Hong Kong's average is just $43,200 — one-fifth of Taiwan's. Vietnam sits at about $47,700; mainland China at roughly $74,500, near the overall mean.
In plain terms = where the unit price is high, the work being done is high-value advanced packaging — bonding HBM to GPUs on the same substrate. Where it is low, the location is mostly a transit hub or handles simpler assembly.
What links high unit prices to packaging capacity?
Taiwan's elevated pricing aligns directly with TSMC's CoWoS process — an advanced packaging method that places GPUs or ASICs alongside HBM on a single substrate — and with ASE's packaging operations on the island.
In Malaysia, ASE opened its fifth plant in Penang in February 2025. TF-AMD Microelectronics is expanding bump and advanced packaging capacity there; of roughly RM 5 billion in total investment, about RM 3 billion targets fan-out embedded die and 2.5D packaging.
An unnamed industry source told Chosun Biz that the growth mainly reflects Malaysia's rise as an alternative supply chain — AI accelerator demand has outstripped existing packaging capacity, and the spillover effect is now visible.
How should Hong Kong's large share be read?
Hong Kong accounts for 54% of total exports by weight but only 30% by value — large volumes of low-unit-price product transit through Hong Kong rather than being packaged there.
This means → Hong Kong is not a significant HBM packaging center. Its share must be read through the lens of re-export, not equated with end demand.
Share shifts are notable too: Taiwan's share fell from 51.2% in the same period of 2025 to 39%; Hong Kong's rose from 19.9% to 30%. In July, Taiwan dropped 43.8% MoM to $2.83 billion, and Hong Kong briefly overtook it at $3.08 billion.
Why are unit prices rising almost everywhere?
Every destination saw sharp year-on-year price increases: Hong Kong's average rose from roughly $14,900/kg to about $43,200; mainland China's from about $23,100 to roughly $74,500.
TrendForce projects Q2 2026 conventional DRAM contract prices rising 58–63% quarter-on-quarter — suppliers are tilting capacity toward HBM and server products, squeezing conventional DRAM supply. This price uptrend is a key backdrop to the across-the-board unit-price lift.
August data shows Malaysia's exports reached $1.625 billion (+466.6% YoY), a clear acceleration. As local packaging capacity expands, Malaysia is becoming a key window for tracking AI supply-chain diversification.
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