IC Insights has published its latest supplier rankings for semiconductors and has said that if the high memory prices (NAND and DRAM) continue to prevail in the market, Samsung could overtake Intel as the largest chip maker in Q2 of this year, the first time that Intel would have been beaten since 1993. The company said that based on Intel guidance and an assumption of 7.5% growth for Samsung, the Korean company would be in the lead.
Samsung Could go past Intel. Chart:Meko from IC Insights data
In its rankings, IC Insights showed historic data that showed the change in big chip companies and the latest list highlights the growth of Qualcomm and Broadcom as well as Mediatek – all fabless companies. Nvidia is not far off the top 10 (it is expecting revenues of $6 billion this year)
Analyst Comment
Intel was a memory company early on, but got out when it thought it had no chance to compete in the long term and it moved to microprocessors. Will Samsung come under threat from China in memory? It seems a strong possibility, but I do not profess to know if that is likely. Further, the memory market is very cyclical and it’s not obvious that Samsung will be able to sustain its strong position. Nevertheless, its strong position in memory must be helping a lot to fund investment in other segments of the business. (BR)
