Sales Growth Expected to Continue Next Year
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix had their solid and steady presence felt by ranking first and third in the world semiconductor industry in the first half of this year.
Samsung Electronics widened its gap with Intel, a former No. 1 player in the semiconductor industry, to more than US$7 billion. SK Hynix also beat TSMC, the world's number one foundry firm, for the first time.
According to a report from market researcher IC Insights on the world’s top 15 global semiconductor makers including foundry companies, Samsung Electronics placed first with US$39.78 billion in sales in the first half of this year. The sales figure is a 36 percent increase from US$29.18 billion in the same period of last year.
Second place was taken by Intel with US$32.58 billion. Intel, which had been the solid number one player since 1993, lost its first place to Samsung Electronics last year for the first time.
Intel also saw its sales rise 13 percent from the same period of last year, but failed to catch up with Samsung Electronics. The gap between sales of Samsung Electronics and Intel widened to US$7.2 billion this year from US$342 million in the first half of last year.
SK Hynix claimed third place. Its sales soared 56 percent to US$17.75 billion, relegating TSMC, which posted US$16.31 billion, to fourth place.
Fifth place went to Micron, one of the top three DRAM manufacturers in the world. Micron was followed by Broadcom, Qualcomm and Toshiba (including Toshiba Memory). Total sales of the top 15 semiconductor companies in the first half of this year hit US$182.33 billion, up 24% from US$147.19 billion in the same period of last year.
"In the first half of the year, among the top 15 companies, 11 recorded a double-digit increase in sales," the report said. “Seven of the 11 enjoyed sales growth of 20% or more. The seven are large memory suppliers -- Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron, Toshiba, Western Digital and SanDisk -- and Nvidia and STMicroelectronics.”
The report forecast that Samsung Electronics would take the No. 1 spot this year, as well. This year, Samsung Electronics is expected to record US$70 billion in memory semiconductor sales, up 31 percent from the same period last year and US$13.5 billion in non-memory sales, up about 8 percent from the same period of last year, according to the report.
As the semiconductor market is expected to continue growing by the end of next year, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are likely to put up a strong sales performance.
In a recent market forecast report, the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS), a global chip industry group, estimated that worldwide semiconductor sales would total US$477.1 billion this year, up 15.7 percent from last year's US$412.2 billion. Even though the figure fell short of last year's record-high growth of 21.6 percent but was revised up 3.3 percentage points from 12.4 percent forecast two months ago.
The report predicted that global semiconductor sales would arrive at US$502 billion next year, up 5.2 percent from this year, while exceeding US$500 billion for the first time in history. In addition, the WSTS slightly revised its growth forecast upwards by 4.4 percent two months ago.