After 24 years as market leader for world semiconductor sales, Intel has now been overtaken by the South Korean company Samsung for sales in the second quarter of 2017.
 
Intel only just missed out on breaking Texas Instruments’ record for being the leading semiconductor supplier for 25 years running, between 1959 and 1984. As it stands TI is unlikely to be in a position to catch up. Lee Byung-chull, the founder of Samsung, said in the 1980s that his goal was to make Samsung a market leader and that it would retain this position for 100 years.
 
Intel posted a figure of 14.77 billion dollars for sales in the second quarter of 2017 yielding a profit of 3.8 billion dollars. That’s a 9 % increase on the second quarter sales, and a tripling of the profit for the same period last year. Unfortunately that was not quite enough to trump Samsung’s sales of 15.65 billion dollars (just for its semiconductor sector) for the same period with a profit of 7.15 billion dollars. The increased profit is largely down to Samsung’s investment in semiconductor chip memories; it holds a 44% share in the global DRAM market and a 36.7% share in the NAND flash market. In the last year high demand has seen memory prices soar.
In this ever fluctuating market Samsung need to keep their eye on the ball if they are to retain their position for the next 99 years.