Samsung is no longer the world's biggest semiconductor chip firm. According to the latest figures from Counterpoint Research, Samsung Electronics' revenue from its semiconductor chip division dropped from $70.2 billion in 2022 to $43.4 billion in 2023. That's a massive 38% drop year-on-year due to the market slump for memory chips and Samsung's inability to get clients for its advanced chip fabrication processes.
Intel overtook Samsung in global semiconductor chip segment in 2023, but Samsung could bounce back in 2024
Intel's revenue dropped, too, but it didn't drop as much, and it was able to overtake Samsung in terms of semiconductor chip revenue. Intel's revenue dropped 15% from $59.8 billion in 2022 to $50.5 billion in 2023. Nvidia was among the only semiconductor chip companies in the world to have seen increased revenue, thanks to the AI boom and the increased demand for powerful GPUs for cloud servers. Nvidia saw a massive growth of 86% in revenue in 2023, as its revenue reached $30.3 billion compared to $16.3 billion in 2022. Due to such a meteoric rise, its rank improved from tenth in 2022 to third in 2023.
Qualcomm ranked fourth in 2023 with a revenue of $30.2 billion, a 17% drop from $36.3 billion in the year earlier. Broadcom maintained its fifth rank, thanks to its $30 billion revenue (13% higher than 2022). SK Hynix, Samsung's biggest competitor in the memory chip market, had a revenue of $23.6 billion. Its revenue dropped 33% from $35 billion in 2022. AMD experienced a slight (4%) drop in revenue from $23.6 billion in 2022 to $22.6 billion in 2023. Texas Instruments' revenue dropped 12% from $20 billion in 2022 to $17.5 billion in 2023, and it ranked seventh in the global semiconductor chip market.
Samsung's revenue is expected to improve in 2024, as the demand for memory chips is expected to improve, and the prices of memory chips are also rising compared to last year. Both these trends will likely offer a good rise in Samsung's revenue in 2024. It is also possible that Samsung will win its crown back from Intel and become the world's biggest semiconductor chip company once again. Samsung's LPDDR5X DRAM is expected to be embedded into Intel's Lunar Lake MX chips that will launch later this year, which is good news for the company.
