SK Hynix is considering new ways to sell the rights to its memory chips, including so-called "memory as a service," which would mean customers could rent storage resources from the South Korean company without buying the chips. "We can actually offer other business models," SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won said in an interview. "We can become a storage service provider, offering 'memory as a service.' That's actually another area we can focus on in the future."
Choi Tae-won made the comments after his subsidiary SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion through the issuance of ADRs, setting a record for the largest initial public offering by a foreign company in the United States. The opening price of SK Hynix ADR is approximately 14% higher than the issue price.
Choi did not specify how the business model would work, saying new software would be needed to support it. However, there are already technology companies adopting business models such as "software as a service", which allow customers to pay usage fees to obtain software or computing power without purchasing products.
Cui Taiyuan said that the goal of launching this new service is to solve the memory capacity bottleneck.
"We have to address this," he said.