< The 2015 All-Asia Research Team
Total appearances: 7
Team debut: 2007A runner-up for the past two years, Nomura climbs to third place, marking its strongest showing to date. Seoul-based Changwon Chung covers regional hardware companies with five colleagues, who work from offices in Hong Kong, Seoul and Taipei. They forecast that makers of smartphones and tablets will have to raise prices, on a local currency basis, to offset the impacts of weak currencies in Europe and several emerging markets. “It is important to keep an eye on the impact on the set-product demands from the price increases,” observes Chung. “Also, we are keeping an eye on the smartphone market dynamics amid the fierce competition among Apple, Samsung [Electronics Co.] and China players.” Samsung is one of his team’s favorite names in this space. The South Korea–based multinational electronics giant boasts robust technological competitiveness, as reflected in shipment statistics for its Galaxy S6 smartphone, the researchers advise, and is enjoying a boost to its components business from strong Galaxy S6 sales as well as market share gains for its DRAM business. Newcomer Chung also leads a squad that merits a runner-up position on the Technology/Semiconductors lineup. After earning an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at South Korea’s Yonsei University and a graduate degree from Yonsei’s business school, the 45-year-old analyst worked at Lehman Brothers and Daewoo Securities before joining Nomura in 2009.
