Intel widens lead over Samsung in chip market

Intel Corp., the world's biggest semiconductor maker, widened its global market share lead over Samsung Electronics Co. in the first half of this year, mainly due to weaker memory chip prices, a market report showed Friday. According to U.S.-based IC Insights Inc., Intel's market share in semiconductors moved up 2.7 percentage points from a year earlier to 21.7 percent in the six-month period, with Samsung's numbers edging up 0.1 percentage point to 15.1 percent. The gap between the top two companies reached 6.6 percentage points from 4 percentage points in the first half of 2010, it said. IC Insights said the gap was caused by the sharp drop in dynamic random access memory (DRAM) prices that make up the bulk of earnings for Samsung's semiconductor operations. Industry sources said DRAM prices have been falling steadily in the following months since an all-time high in May 2010 Reflecting this, Intel's sales, based mainly on its microprocessor business, shot up 23 percent on-year to US$23.89 billion in the January-June period, while Samsung's sales gained just 9 percent to $16.68 billion. The latest figures are a setback for Samsung, the world's largest memory chipmaker, which had successfully reduced its market share gap with Intel in recent years. The sluggishness in DRAM prices also hurt Hynix Semiconductor Inc., which saw its global market share fall to 4.6 percent in the first half from 5.2 percent the year before. Hynix sales contracted 4 percent to just under $5.05 billion, with its overall market share ranking dropping one notch to eighth place. The semiconductor market research company, meanwhile, said that total sales of the world's top 20 producers of computer chips reached $110.11 billion in the first six months of this year, up 8 percent from $101.94 billion tallied a year earlier.