Samsung Electronics elevated its lead because the No. 1 semiconductor vendor because of the booming DRAM market in 2018, in keeping with Gartner. However, the reminiscence chip big is more likely to slip to second place in 2019.
As excessive as 88% of Samsung’s revenues comes from reminiscence gross sales. “Samsung’s lead is literally built on sand, in the form of memory silicon, and those shifting sands in 2019 will almost certainly lead to Samsung losing its No. 1 semiconductor crown to Intel in 2019,” mentioned Andrew Norwood, analysis VP at Gartner.
Worldwide semiconductor revenues totaled US$474.6 billion in 2018, a 12.5% enhance from 2017, Gartner disclosed. Growth was weaker than the 21.9% on-year enhance in 2017, as a result of reminiscence development slowing to 24.9% in 2018 from 61.8% a yr earlier.
“Despite slowing growth, the memory market was still the largest semiconductor market, accounting for 34.3% of revenue,” Norwood continued. “This was driven by increases in average selling prices (ASPs) for DRAM for the majority of 2018. However, ASPs began to decline in the fourth quarter and this will continue through most of 2019 due to oversupply conditions.”
Intel’s semiconductor revenues grew by 12.9% in contrast with 2017, regardless of delays within the introduction of 10nm manufacturing course of and a constrained low-end CPU provide scenario within the second half of 2018, Gartner mentioned. SK Hynix skilled the strongest development among the many top-10 worldwide semiconductor distributors with a 37.4% surge in 2018.
In addition, Gartner indicated that the second-largest class – application-specific customary merchandise (ASSP) – noticed development of solely 5.1% as a result of a stalling smartphone market mixed with a pill market that continues to say no. Vendors that rely closely on these finish markets to promote utility processors, modems and different parts in lots of circumstances noticed semiconductor revenues decline. Leading distributors in these areas, together with Qualcomm and MediaTek, are aggressively increasing into adjoining markets with stronger prospects for development, together with automotive and IoT functions. However, just like the maturation of the PC market, a mature smartphone market is more likely to proceed to be a headwind in 2019 for firms with excessive publicity, Gartner believes.
