Intel kept its global chip market leadership position in the second quarter, but Samsung closed the gap in second place, according to IHS Markit research.
Intel’s total revenue for the quarter was $15.5 billion, marking the third consecutive quarter it has been on top. That represented a drop of 2% from $15.8 billion in the first quarter, however.
By comparison, Samsung’s revenues in the second quarter were $13 billion, up 6.6% from the first quarter, IHS said.
Samsung saw improvement in NAND and DRAM because of strong demand for its high-density products from mobile and storage OEMs. “NAND sales specifically are benefitting from the higher adoption of Solid-state Drives (SSDs) in data centers and from the arrival of new smartphones that have expanded memory content,” said Ron Ellwanger, senior analyst for semiconductor manufacturing at IHS.
Samsung’s performance in NAND and DRAM was in stark contrast to the overall memory market in 2019, IHS noted. Global memory revenue dropped sharply in the second quarter compared to a year earlier, with DRAM down 33% and NAND down 35%.
Intel saw strong performance in the quarter with IoT, with sales of industrial PCs that use Intel chips. Intel suffered in the data center, however, Ellwanger said, because of slow demand from cloud service providers. Those providers are working through inventory of server and storage arrays and reducing purchases of new gear with Intel chips.
In addition, Intel is seeing “increasing competition in its core microprocessor business” from AMD and Arm-based chips from various suppliers, IHS said.
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