November 19 according to data from market research company IC insights, the memory market is expected to decline 34% this year, Intel is expected to become the largest semiconductor supplier again, and its sales in 2019 will be 26% higher than Samsung.
Intel was the No. 1 semiconductor supplier in the first quarter of 2017, but it lost its leading position in the second quarter of 2017. Intel also lost its ranking of the first in the whole year since 1993 in 2017. With the strong growth of DRAM and NAND flash markets in 2018, Samsung's total semiconductor sales increased by 7% compared with Intel's in 2018.
According to the survey, Intel, Samsung, TSMC, SK Hynix and Meguiar are estimated to be the top five semiconductor suppliers in the world this year; the 6th-10th are Broadcom, Qualcomm, Teyi, Toshiba and Huida. The 10th to 15th places are Sony, Italian French semiconductor, Infineon, NXP and MediaTek.
Overall, it is expected that the sales of the top 15 semiconductor companies in 2019 will be 15% lower than that in 2018, two percentage points lower than the expected 13% decline of the global semiconductor industry. Samsung, SK Hynix and micron all expect a year-on-year decline of & Ge; 29% in 2018, while SK Hynix is expected to rank among the top 15 companies with a 38% decline.
Sony is the fastest growing company, with strong sales of image sensors expected to rise 4 places to 11th. By contrast, NXP expects to drop 2 places to 14th this year, with sales down 6%.
The top 15 companies in 2019 include a pure wafer foundry (TSMC) and four fabless companies. If TSMC is excluded from the top 15, Hisilicon (Huawei), headquartered in China, will rank 15th. In 2019, its predicted sales volume will be $7.5 billion, 24% higher than that in 2018, and it will be ranked as the fastest-growing manufacturer with Sony.