Memory Market Slump Deepening
As the memory semiconductor market contracted in the third quarter, Samsung Electronics lost its No. 1 position in the global semiconductor market to Intel.
According to market research firm Omdia, the global semiconductor market in the third quarter of this year was US$147 billion, down 7 percent from US$158 billion in the second quarter.
The global semiconductor market had expanded for eight consecutive quarters since 2020 thanks to increased demand for electronic and IT products amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but the market began to shrink in the second quarter of this year.
Cliff Rimbach, chief researcher at Omdia, said that while the market decline in the second quarter was blamed on a weak PC market and the sluggishness of Intel, the main cause of the decline in the third quarter was the weakness of the memory market. He said the memory market saw profits decrease by 27 percent compared to the previous quarter due to customers’ inventory adjustments and a decrease in demand for chips from data centers, PCs, and mobile devices.”
As a result, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology, which are all centered on the memory semiconductor business, recorded a decline of more than US$10 billion in semiconductor revenue in the third quarter of this year. Samsung’s sales in the third quarter decreased by 28.1 percent from the previous quarter to only US$14.6 billion, lagging behind Intel, which posted US$14.9 billion in sales.
Third place was taken by Qualcomm, whose sales grew by 5.6 percent compared to the previous quarter. SK Hynix fell from third place in the previous quarter to fourth, with sales falling by more than 26 percent. Micron’s sales also fell by more than 27 percent, replacing Broadcom at sixth place.
Meanwhile, Omdia’s semiconductor company rankings this time did not include foundry companies.