Report: Samsung expands lead over Intel as memory chip demand booms

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Report: Samsung expands lead over Intel as memory chip demand booms [Copy link]

Beijing time, August 21 evening news, research firm IC Insights released a report today, due to the continued growth in demand for DRAM and NAND flash memory, Samsung Electronics' sales in the global semiconductor market in the first half of this year were 22% higher than Intel's, while the proportion was only 1% a year ago.

In the first quarter of 2017, Intel was still the world's largest semiconductor supplier. In fact, Intel has maintained the title of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer since 1993. But starting from the second quarter of last year, and throughout 2017, Intel was overtaken by Samsung. IC Insights estimates that memory devices will account for 84% of Samsung's total semiconductor sales this year, up 3 percentage points from 81% in 2017 and 13 percentage points from 71% in the first half of 2016. IC Insights also said that Samsung's non-memory semiconductor sales this year are expected to be only $13.5 billion, up 8% from $12.5 billion in 2017. In contrast, Samsung's memory semiconductor sales are expected to reach $70 billion this year, up 31% from last year. IC Insights also ranked the top 15 semiconductor manufacturers in the world in the first half of this year based on revenue. After Samsung and Intel, SK Hynix ranked third, TSMC ranked fourth, and Micron ranked fifth. The sixth to tenth places are Broadcom, Qualcomm, Toshiba, Texas Instruments and Nvidia.

In the first half of this year, the sales of these 15 major semiconductor manufacturers increased by 24% year-on-year. In contrast, the overall semiconductor market sales increased by more than 20% year-on-year.