High demand and good prices for DRAM and Flash have pushed Samsung back to the top of semiconductor manufacturers. It was just able to beat Intel, which also grew in the second quarter, but not as much as Samsung. Overall, the market grew by double digits.
The top 10 manufacturers generated ten percent more sales on average in the second quarter of this year with semiconductor products compared to the first three months. At least 4.3 billion US dollars had to be turned over to even land on this list, which is why many well-known companies do not appear there. AMD, for example, grew by twelve percent according to these determinations, but did not reach the top 10 in terms of sales.
All three memory manufacturers recorded the greatest growth among the top ten places, plus Nvidia and MediaTek. MediaTek was able to benefit from Huawei's crash, and its own chips for cheaper 5G smartphones are more in demand than ever. The fact that Nvidia is doing good business only became clear yesterday with the new quarterly figures, which showed a significant growth in sales accompanied by high profits.
The memory division did really well in the second quarter. The prices rose in almost all areas compared to the first quarter, SK Hynix was able to report 21 percent more sales in the segment, Samsung still 19 percent and Micron an additional 16 percent. The chart from IC Insights clearly shows that the pig cycle is omnipresent in the memory business, while Intel's sales come largely from CPUs and remain relatively stable. The outlook for the third quarter also remains rosy. Industry observers expect slight discounts on DRAM chips for clients, but the price of memory for smartphones and servers should remain at a high level.
Samsung against Intel at the top (Image: IC Insights) The third quarter should be for almost everyone Companies go on in a very similar way. The overall market will continue to grow significantly; overall, market researchers expect an increase of 23 percent at the end of the year compared to 2020.