Leading Global Semiconductor Industry

The combined share of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in the global semiconductor market stood at 20.7 percent last year, up 5 percent points from a year earlier.
The combined share of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in the global semiconductor market stood at 20.7 percent last year, up 5 percent points from a year earlier.

 

The combined share of Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. in the global semiconductor market stood at 20.7 percent last year, up 5 percent points from a year earlier. Samsung Electronics surpassed Intel as the world's biggest chipmaker by market share for the first time. SK Hynix jumped two spots from the 5th, following Samsung Electronics and Intel.

According to market research firm IHS Markit on March 18, Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor division posted US$62.03 billon (66.28 trillion won) in sales last year, up 53.4 percent from 2016. The company’s market share came to 14.5 percent, exceeding Intel, which had been the world’s biggest seller of chipsets for a long time, by 0.2 percent point. Last year, Intel recorded sales of US$61.46 billion (65.61 trillion won).

SK Hynix, which has become the third largest chip manufacturer, had sales of 26.64 billion (28.46 trillion won) in total last year. Its market share stood at 5.2 percent, followed by Micron Technology Inc. with 5.3 percent, Broadcom Corp. with 4 percent and Qualcomm Incorp. with 3.9 percent.

Such achievements were hard to imagine not more than 10 years ago. In 2008, Samsung Electronics recorded sales of US$16.9 billion (18.06 trillion won) and market share of 6.5 percent in the chipset division. The figure was even less than half of Intel’s sales of US$34 billion (36.32 trillion won) at that time. Since then, Samsung’s sales jumped to some US$20 billion (21.37 trillion won) in 2010, US$30 billion (32.06 trillion won) in 2013 and US$40 billion (42.74 trillion won) in 2016 and made a quantum leap to US$60 billion (64.11 trillion won) last year.

SK Hynix also posted a mere US$6.02 billion (6.44 trillion won) in sales and 2.3 percent in market share in 2008. The company ranked around 10 in the industry. However, its ranking shoot up with a whopping 81 percent growth in sales last year.

Market experts forecast that the global chip market will grow further this year. Accordingly, domestic chipmakers are expected to see their market positon stronger.

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