For decades, the only name that would have come into your mind when talking about the chipset market would have been Intel. Lately, there a couple more names such as Qualcomm and Samsung.
It is now emerging that Samsung has ousted Intel as the world leading chip manufacturer if the two companies’ annual financial reports are anything to go by. Bloomberg was the first to note Intel could be losing its market leadership to the South Korean tech giant based on their annual revenue; Intel has garnered $62.8 billion against Samsung’s $69.1 billion.
Though it is not easy comparing Intel and Samsung in such a straightforward manner. Intel’s core strength lies in manufacturing x86 chips, and in that niche, it remains the market leader giving a very wide distance to its nearest competitor. On the other hand, Samsung strength lies in the making of memory and flash storage. However, speaking from a purely monetary point of view, Samsung’s business racked in more revenue compared to Intel’s.
The prospects for Samsung’s business looks brighter compared to Intel’s business. That is because Intel’s focus remains in making CPUs, while the demand for Samsung memory and flash storage is set to increase exponentially. Before you look into the future, the fact remains that virtually all smartphones and tablets in the market right now run on Samsung’s RAM. It is also a fact that Samsung also commands a third of the solid state drive storage market.
In the Q4 report, the forecast show demand for high-density memory products for cloud servers and for chips that will be used for automotive electronics and AI will increase tremendously in the near future. Samsung is currently the market leader in that space and continues to position itself to capitalize on that growing opportunity.
When you also consider the fact that Samsung holds a broader portfolio of businesses; most of which it is also a market leader, the company’s financial might simply places it in an advantageous position. The company is the leading producer of TVs, home appliances, smartphone displays, and one of the best smartphones vendors in the world.
Though the memory business division manufacturing DRAM and NAND did big the company a big boost in its annual revenue. It is also important to point out that the price for memory has more than doubled in the past one year as demand for it continues to rise. All these factors considered, Samsung is poised for an even bountiful year.