Samsung leads the semiconductor market and places Intel on #2. According to the latest data relating to semiconductor sales, Samsung has edged out Intel with the continued boom to the semiconductor sales. At the same time TSMC cuts forecasts because of smartphone weakness.
In 2017, worldwide semiconductor revenue rose to $420.4 billion according to a research released from Gartner. This rise of revenue represented a 21.6 per cent of increase from the 2016 global revenue figure of $345.9 bn.
On the other side, according the figures released for the current month, Samsung has managed well to emerge as the leading semiconductor vendor. No matter if even Samsung’s sales margin over second-placed Intel is relatively small.
EE News has reported that Samsung saw $59.875 bn sales of memory chips compared with Intel’s semiconductor sales of $58.725 bn.
With Samsung leading the row to place Intel on number 2, the third position is held by SK hynix while the fourth spot sees Micron Technology and the fifth place has been given to Qualcomm.
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Success of the South Korean giant has been put down to an increase in the average selling prices alongside a rise in unit sales of NAND flash memory & DRAM.
In 2017, the overall memory market grew nearly $50 bn to total $130 bn. This growth is a 61.8 per cent increase from 2016. Driving this is actually an expansion in Internet of Things devices.
CC Wei, the co-CEO of TSMC, claims while talking to EE Europe that he is cutting previous growth forecasts for the semiconductor industry and TSMC. He opines that this is being interpreted as a reference to poor sales for the Apple iPhone X, especially in the US market.
He also says that a further factor relates to cryptocurrency as the Asian manufacturer makes chips for bitcoin mining. It also blames uncertainty over cryptocurrency mining for the weaker than expected growth projected for the rest of the current year.
CC Wei said CNBC: ‘We forecast the overall semiconductor market, excluding memory, will grow by 5 percent, while foundry we expect to grow by about a 8 percent. We forecast TSMC’s 2018 revenue growth in US dollar will be about a 10 percent, rather than the previously indicated 10 to 15 percent, due to the smartphone weakness and the uncertainty in cryptocurrency mining demand.’
