This photo provided by Samsung Electronics Co. on May 21, 2020, shows the company’s chip plant in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul.
SEOUL, Aug. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — Samsung Electronics Co. regained the No.1 spot in chip sales in the second quarter of the year, surpassing its archrival Intel Corp. for the first time in almost three years, on the back of robust sales of memory semiconductors, a report showed Friday.
The South Korean tech giant logged US$20.29 billion in chip sales in the April-June period, up 19 percent from a quarter earlier, according to the latest McClean Report released by market researcher IC Insights.
Samsung, the world’s largest memory chipmaker, racked up $19.26 billion in integrated circuit (IC) sales, while $1.03 billion came from optoelectronic, sensor and discrete (OSD) sales.
IC Insights said strong demand and rising prices for DRAM and flash memory products helped Samsung to displace Intel Corp. for the first time since the third quarter of 2018 when the memory market was in boom.
Intel posted $19.3 billion in chip sales in the second quarter, up only 3 percent from the first quarter.
IC Insights predicted with solid demand of memory chips continuing in the current quarter, Samsung is likely to defend its No. 1 position in the third quarter with sales of $22.3 billion, beating Intel by $3.5 billion.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s No. 1 foundry firm, remained the third largest semiconductor supplier in the second quarter with sales of $13.31 billion, up 3 percent from a quarter earlier.
South Korea’s SK hynix Inc. took fourth after its sales grew 21 percent quarter-on-quarter, the highest among the top 10 vendors, to $9.21 billion followed by U.S. memory giant Micron Technology Inc., whose sales expanded 16 percent from the first quarter to $7.68 billion.
The report showed semiconductor sales from the top 10 firms rose 10 percent quarter-on-quarter to $95.5 billion in the second quarter, beating the total industry average growth of 8 percent.
Of the top 10, six firms were headquartered in the United States, followed by two each in South Korea and Taiwan. The latest ranking included four fabless companies — Qualcomm, Nvidia, Broadcom and MediaTek.
(Yonhap)
