There's some bad news for Samsung as its top position in the global semiconductor market has been taken over by Intel. This is the result of the contraction the semiconductor market suffered in Q3 2022, as per Business Korea. Market research firm Omdia studied the global semiconductor market performance and reported that the market in Q3 2022 stood at $147 billion, which is down by 7% from $158 billion in Q2 2022.
While the semiconductor market saw a gradual expansion for eight consecutive quarters since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic did not do well for the industry. COVID-19 brought increased demand for electronic and IT products, shrinking the global semiconductor market.
The main cause of this sluggish performance of the semiconductor market was the weakness of the memory market. Cliff Rimbach, the chief researcher at Omdia, said, “the memory market saw profits decrease by 27 percent compared to the previous quarter due to customers’ inventory adjustments and a decrease in demand for chips from data centers, PCs, and mobile devices.”
This factor hit companies like Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology pretty hard, as all these companies are in the memory semiconductor business, ultimately recording a decline of more than $10 billion in revenue in Q3 2022. Samsung's sales dipped in Q3 by 28.1% from Q2 to only $14.6 billion. It lagged behind Intel, which posted $14.9 billion in sales.
Qualcomm was ranked third in the list as it posted a 5.6% increase in Q3 as compared to the second quarter. SK Hynix dropped from third to fourth place as sales dropped by more than 26%. Micron replaced Broadcom in the sixth position. Micron sales also fell by more than 27%.
