IC Insights: Samsung surpasses Intel to become the world's largest chip supplier

As shown in the figure above, from 1993 to 2016, Intel was undoubtedly the world's largest semiconductor supplier. But then the situation began to change. After 2017, with the booming development of the storage semiconductor market, Samsung began to gradually catch up with Intel. For Samsung, replacing Intel as the world's largest semiconductor supplier is a milestone achievement.

The memory chip market experienced a major slump at the end of 2018. Before that, Samsung occupied the number one position for six consecutive quarters. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Intel once again overtook Samsung. The memory market declined sharply in late 2018 and early 2019, so that Samsung's revenue in the third quarter of 2018 was 17% more than Intel's. After two quarters, it was 18% less than Intel's revenue. Intel also experienced a decline in sales in the first quarter of 2019, but this decline was much smaller than the decline in the storage market at that time.

Subsequently, Intel's revenue rebounded significantly in the second half of 2019, but remained stable for most of the entire 2020. In the past 10 quarters (the fourth quarter of 2018-the first quarter of 2021), Intel is still the number one supplier. At the same time, Samsung's semiconductor sales have slowly risen from the trough in the first quarter of 2019, as shown in the figure below:

IC Insights believes that, driven by the memory market recovery and Intel’s weak sales growth, Samsung will continue to stabilize Intel from the second quarter of 2021 and become the world’s number one semiconductor manufacturer. Intel's official financial report outlook shows that the full-year sales of 2021 will drop by 1% compared to 2020. With the growth of the DRAM market and the growth momentum of the NAND flash memory market in the second half of the year, it seems likely that Samsung will consolidate its number one position in the world.