For decades, Intel has been dominant and well-known in chip manufacturing for all sorts of devices. But in 2017, Samsung surpassed Intel’s $63 billion revenue by $69 billion in chips sales. Intel has always been at the top since 1992. The company had an annual increase of six percent last year but it wasn’t enough to stop Samsung from removing them at the top.
The total global market for semi-conductors drastically grey by 22 percent ($419.7 billion) in 2017, fuelled by growth in smartphones, TVs and other connected devices, Gartner calculated. These days, you’ll probably find a smartphone, tablet, or TV with a Samsung RAM in it. No wonder the company is the world’s most prolific vendor of smartphone which resulted to a boost of quarterly earnings toppling Intel from its place.
One of the reasons of Samsung’s success in memory is that it’s a business Intel created in the 1960s. The U.S. company exited the market when competition from Japanese companies became too great in the early 1990s, then recently re-entered. One of Intel’s biggest growth areas last year was memory chips, but it has a long way to go to catch up with Samsung. The South Korean company got its start in memory chips by licensing technology from Intel’s Japanese competitor. Samsung is moving in on Intel’s traditional turf now, making higher-priced components. Its factories now produce processors that run mobile phones and it’s the contract manufacturer for Qualcomm Inc., which is taking a run at Intel in PC and server processors.
Samsung said it intends to increase its chipset focus on cloud services, AI and automotive. On the smartphone front, where its name is best known among consumers, the company said it plans to adopt “cutting-edge technologies” like foldable displays. Samsung said also that it would continue to develop its smart services with a focus on its Bixby assistant and upcoming 5G technologies.
