Samsung continued to surpass Intel in the first quarter to become the world's largest semiconductor market

According to reports, in the past few years, Samsung's semiconductor business performed exceptionally well. The Korean electronics giant has consistently set new profit records in the past few quarters, with the semiconductor industry making the most of its outstanding performance. In 2017, Samsung replaced Intel as the world's largest chip maker, demonstrating Samsung’s rapid growth in the semiconductor industry.

However, there are also many opinions that Samsung’s performance in sustaining its strong growth may not be sufficient for its staying power. However, from the current point of view, Samsung's momentum does not show any sign of slowing down. Last month, we saw another impressive performance in Samsung's first-quarter earnings report, in which the semiconductor sector continued to make significant contributions. Recently, the market statistics company IC Insights just released the first quarter statistics report also showed Samsung's leading position in chip sales.

According to the results of the report, Samsung’s chip sales in the first quarter of 2018 were US$18.6 billion, surpassing the 23% of Intel’s second-ranked company, which had sales of US$15.8 billion. Samsung's growth rate is as high as 43%, while Intel's growth rate is only 11%. In addition, TSMC, SK Hynix and Micron are ranked three to five respectively.

The report said that Samsung's outstanding performance mainly benefits from the market's demand for DRAM and NAND flash memory. In the first quarter of Samsung's semiconductor sales, the proportion of memory chips reached 83%, higher than 77% last year. Samsung’s competitors, Micron and SK Hynix, also benefited from this market situation, with both companies’ sales increasing by 49%.

Samsung previously stated that it is expected that the demand for the memory chip market will slow down in the next few quarters, which may affect the company's semiconductor business profitability. Therefore, it needs to be remembered that Samsung can gain the first position in the chip market, mainly relying on the strong performance of memory products, rather than the microprocessor chip.

On the other hand, Intel's ability to govern the semiconductor market for up to 20 years is mainly due to the advantages of processor chip products, and the slowdown in the future demand of the memory chip market may help Intel to overtake Samsung to recapture the market. One of the thrones.