International. The decline in the market for semiconductors used in mobile phones and enterprise servers led to a realignment in the company's market share ranking for semiconductor manufacturers. While Samsung led semiconductor sales for the past five quarters, Intel outperformed Samsung in the fourth quarter.
Intel's semiconductor sales revenue reached $18.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to Samsung's $15.8 billion. While sales of Intel semiconductors from quarter to quarter declined 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, Samsung fell 24.9 percent, according to IHS Markit.
"Traditionally, Samsung has been much more dependent on memory chip sales than Intel, so when mobile device sales slowed sharply last year, so did the company's memory chip sales," said Ron Ellwanger, senior semiconductor manufacturing analyst at IHS Markit. "The last time the memory market declined the most was in the fourth quarter of 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis."
Intel last held quarterly in semiconductor sales in the second quarter of 2017. Samsung overtook Intel in the third quarter of 2017, due to a shortage of memory chips used in the growing cell phone and server markets, which Samsung was able to complete.
Samsung continues to lead total sales in 2018
Samsung's annual semiconductor revenue rose 20.3 percent, year-over-year, reaching $74.6 billion in 2018. Intel's semiconductor revenue rose 13.4 percent to $69.9 billion. Nearly all (87 percent) of Samsung's semiconductor sales in the fourth quarter were memory chips, compared to just 6 percent for Intel.
The global semiconductor market declined by 10.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, with all market applications and device market segments contracting. "The reasons for the semiconductor market crash were manifold," Ellwanger said. "Memory chip prices continued to fall, due in large part to an oversupply of memory chips caused by overcapacity and high inventory of semiconductor chips."
Top 10 growth rates of semiconductor suppliers by revenue.
Source: IHS Markit.
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