Samsung Accounts for12.49% of Global Semiconductor Sales
Samsung Electronics has narrowed its gap with Intel in terms of semiconductor market revenue share.
Intel was ranked first in the second quarter of this year by accounting for 17.45 percent of the global semiconductor market revenue (foundry companies excluded). Samsung Electronics came in second with 12.49 percent, according to Omdia, a British market research firm. In the first quarter, Intel took up 17.71 percent and Samsung Electronics 12.48 percent.
Samsung Electronics took first place for two consecutive years in 2017 and 2018 thanks to a memory semiconductor super cycle, but lost its position to Intel in 2019.
The gap in revenue share between the two companies narrowed from 5.61 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 5.23 percentage points in the first quarter of 2020 and to 4.96 percentage points in the second quarter.
Semiconductor companies enjoyed an unexpected boom in the first half of this year as cloud companies expanded servers to meet a COVID-19-fueled increase in demand for untact services. Samsung Electronics maintained its revenue share thanks to increased demand for memory chips such as mobile DRAMs and NAND flashes. But Intel, the number-one company in CPUs, suffered a drop in its revenue share. SK Hynix, which ranked third in revenue share, saw its share increase from 5.33 percent in the first quarter to 6.18 percent in the second quarter based on increased sales of memory chips. Micron of the United States, the fourth-largest global chip seller, recorded a 4.71 percent share in the second quarter up from 4.44 percent in the first quarter.
Nvidia, which surpassed Intel's market cap, put up a good performance as well. The company saw its revenue share increase from 2.46 percent in the first quarter to 2.66 percent in the second quarter. Nvidia is expanding its revenue share riding on the growth of the GPU market.
Omdia predicted that the top three companies' revenue shares will fall in the third quarter as semiconductor prices are forecast to fall due to the increased inventory of server companies. Nevertheless, the gap between Intel and Samsung Electronics is expected to narrow further.
Omdia forecasts that Intel will retain the top position, but its market share is expected to fall to 15.78 percent. It estimates Samsung Electronics’ revenue share at 11.76 percent in the third quarter, down 0.73 percentage points from the second quarter. The gap between the two companies will narrow by 1 percentage point to 4.02 percentage points.
In the CPU market, AMD, Intel's CPU archrival, has released a 7-nm CPU based on the technological prowess of Taiwan's foundry company TSMC. But Intel lags behind in 7-nm technology and is considering outsourcing the production of 7-nm chips.
Samsung, on the other hand, remains the undisputed No. 1 player in the memory semiconductor market and is expanding its business to system semiconductors such as mobile application processors and CMOS image sensors.
Omdia predicted that Nvidia’s revenue share will exceed 3 percent for the first time in the third quarter thanks to an increase in demand for GPUs kindled by the release of new game consoles in the second half. In this case, Nvidia's revenue ranking will rise from 9th place in the third quarter of 2019 to 7th place in the third quarter of 2020. Although SK Hynix, Micron, Broadcom Limited, and Qualcomm will maintain their 3rd to 6th places in the third quarter, their market share will inch up from the second quarter except that of SK Hynix.
Omdia forecast that HiSilicon Technology, the semiconductor design subsidiary of Huawei, will record a 2.69 percent share in the third quarter, slightly larger than its share in the second quarter (2.66 percent) despite U.S. sanctions against Huawei.