Beating Intel, Samsung becomes the world’s largest chip manufacturer in Q2 2021

Recently, a new report appeared on the web revealing that Samsung surpassed Intel and became the world’s largest chip manufacturer in the second quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, the latter announced its partnership with Qualcomm last week, which could make a tough competition for the former.

According to the report, the Korean tech giant’s semiconductor business gained 22.74 trillion won sales in the second quarter of 2021, which is higher than Intel’s total Q2 sales of $19.6 billion.

It’s noteworthy that Intel has been leading the semiconductor market for the last 30 years. In 2017 and 2018, Intel gave up the championship to Samsung, which can be attributed to the significant increase in memory chip sales at that time.

Due to the higher-than-expected price increases for DRAM and NAND chips and the release of backlog demand, Samsung achieved the outstanding performance of its chip business. At the moment, the company is the world’s largest smartphone and chip manufacturer.

If we go with the data shared by DRAMeXchange, the contract price of PC DRAM (DDR48Gb) in July rose 7.89% from the previous month to $4.1, the highest level since April 2019.

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On the other hand, the fixed transaction price of NAND flash 128GB memory cards and multi-layer cell storage products for USB in July was $4.81, an increase of 5.48% from the previous month, and the highest record since September 2018.

Samsung’s determination

The “Vision 2030” plan suggests that Samsung plans to invest 133 trillion won to become the world’s leading foundry. To achieve this massive goal, the company will spend 10 trillion won each year to develop chip foundry technology and purchase necessary equipment.

Just a few days ago, Samsung Electronics executives stated on the quarterly earnings conference call that the company’s foundry business sales are expected to increase by 20% this year.