Industry analyst Gartner says Samsung Electronics is expected to lose its number one position in the semiconductor market this year.
The Korean company had increased its lead as the No. 1 semiconductor vendor in 2018, due to the booming DRAM market.
Gartner says Samsung’s lead was built by demand for memory chips but the demand and the average selling price has reduced since last year.
Up to 88 percent of Samsung’s revenues comes from memory sales and the slowdown is certain to impact the Korean electronics giant.
Gartner has shifted the crown to US-based Intel, where semiconductor revenues grew by 12.9 percent, despite delays in the introduction of 10nm manufacturing process and a constrained low-end CPU supply situation in the second half of 2018.
Worldwide semiconductor revenues totalled US$474.6 billion in 2018, a 12.5 percent increase, but was weaker than the 21.9 percent on-year increase in 2017.
