Huawei showcases the Kirin 980 chip along with other devices at the South & Southeast Asia Commodity Expo and Investment Fair in Kunming, Southwest China's Yunnan Province in June, 2019. Photo: IC

Despite the coronavirus attack, China's chipmakers have speeded up their pace of steadily moving to-ward the global market. Industry insiders said that the virus outbreak can hardly impede China's chip manufacturers to go global.

China's self-developed chip industry will not be af-fected by the prevention and control work of the viral epidemic but will continue to thrive, Xiang Ligang, a telecom industry expert, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

"Several years ago, domestic chips had a tiny mar-ket share in China. Last year China's chipmakers managed to capture 5 percent of the world market. In the next three years, we can achieve up to 50 percent of the global chip market share," Xiang es-timated.

The comment was made after some doubts arose over whether the coronavirus epidemic will batter chip factories in South Korea and will also hit their counterparts in China.

The South Korean memory maker SK Hynix shut down some of its facilities and imposed quarantines of some of its employees on February 20. On Feb-ruary 22, Samsung said an employee at its smartphone factory in Gumi tested positive for the coronavirus, and the company temporarily shut the factory for broader inspections and sterilization there.

However, with the timely prevention and control measures in place, there has been very limited im-pact on chip manufacturing in China.

Ding Jieshuai, an official from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, a leading chip producer, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the outbreak has had very limited impact on the plant's operation.

"We work 24 hours a day, and our production ca-pacity has not been affected," Ding said, adding that the company has taken precautions for the safety of the workers. The company has factories across the country including in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province and Shanghai, with up to 10,000 workers in total.

Ke Guanyan, an employee with Phytium Technolo-gy, a Chinese semiconductor design company, told the Global Times that the company resumed work on February 3, and its staff started working from home via telecommuting.

"We have a sufficient supply of goods for four months. We have been in close communication with the suppliers including the chip factory and the seal-ing and testing factory," Ke said, adding that those companies reported that the viral outbreak has no impact on chip-making, R&D and delivery.

Deng Ziwei, deputy general manager of CEC Indus-trial Internet, also told the Global Times on Wednesday that although the epidemic will have an impact on China and neighboring countries, for do-mestic chips, it means an opportunity to snap up some market shares.

"At present, domestic self-developed chips are mainly used for government and military office sys-tems, while the consumer market takes up less than one percent," Deng said.

The main reason is that chip manufacturers from the US, Japan and South Korea have established mature industries in China, he said.

Meanwhile, CEC Industrial Internet is not only taking domestic orders, but also beginning to expand to the foreign market. For example, it has received an order from Egypt, but because of the logistics problem caused by the epidemic, the goods have not been delivered yet, although that is expected in March.

Xiang said neither the virus outbreak in China nor Japan and South Korea will affect the development of China's strategic chip industry. 

"With the China-US trade war provoked by the US, it has made it clear for China that we cannot rely on importing semiconductor chips," he said. "In addi-tion, the memory chip market is huge and well worth the investment. We are making steady progress on this front, regardless of the coronavirus."