Samsung is already the world's largest chip maker

Intel has dominated chip manufacturing for decades, but in 2017 Samsung took the crown away from it, as evidenced by the two companies' annual financial reports. This market is becoming increasingly competitive, so nothing can be taken for granted.

Samsung beats Intel in the chip manufacturing business

This change in leadership in silicon chip manufacturing was signaled by Intel's $ 62.8 billion in annual revenue that was outweighed by the $ 69.1 billion generated by Samsung's semiconductor division. Intel is focused on x86 processors and Samsung's strength lies in producing memory and flash storage, so they are very different markets, but in monetary terms this last business is bigger.

Samsung begins mass production of its second generation of DRAM at 10nm

Samsung's memory business also appears to be far more important and critical to the future of technology than traditional Intel CPUs. In its latest quarterly report, Samsung anticipates a growing demand for high-density memory products for servers and chipsets needed for automotive electronics and artificial intelligence. This means that Samsung will be ubiquitous in the devices and services to come.

The South Korean is also among the top producers of televisions, all kinds of home appliances, smartphone screens, and is the world's most prolific smartphone provider. Despite this, the biggest boost to its fourth-quarter earnings was driven by the NAND and DRAM memory business. Memory prices have risen sharply in the past year as demand has increased steadily, which has helped the South Korean's excellent year of revenue.

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