After Samsung was the company that sold the most chips during the years 2017 and 2018, leaving Intel far behind, it seems that the market so messy of 2019 has been well suited to the giant of blue since it has served to recover the first position. And, most curiously, Intel is the one who sells the most because it has been the least down, since the rest of the companies, and especially the largest companies, have suffered a tremendous breakdown in terms of sales of semiconductors.
Intel is the one who sells the most in a downward market
Intel has benefited from the particular recession suffered by the memory market Over the past year, which has had an especially negative impact on its biggest competitor, Samsung. So, Intel sales have fallen 0.7% while Samsung's have done 29.1%, those of SK Hynix 38% and those of Micron 32.6%. As we said, the largest have suffered the biggest failures except for Intel, which has once again asserted its regularity of sales to be placed again as the one that sells the most.
| 2019 position | 2018 position | Maker | Sales 2019 | 2019 share (%) | 2018 sales | Variation |
| one | two | Intel | 65793 | 15.7 | 66290 | -0.7 |
| two | one | Samsung | 52214 | 12.5 | 73649 | -29.1 |
| 3 | 3 | SK Hynix | 22478 | 5.4 | 36240 | -38 |
| 4 | 4 | Micron | 20056 | 4.8 | 29742 | -32.6 |
| 5 | 5 | Broadcom | 15293 | 3.7 | 16261 | -6 |
| 6 | 6 | Qualcomm | 13537 | 3.2 | 15375 | -12 |
| 7 | 7 | Texas Instruments | 13203 | 3.2 | 14593 | -9.5 |
| 8 | 8 | ST Microelectronics | 9017 | 2.2 | 9213 | -2.1 |
| 9 | 12 | Kioxia (Toshiba) | 8797 | 2.1 | 8533 | -3.1 |
| 10 | 10 | NXP | 8745 | 2.1 | 9022 | -3.1 |
| Other | 189169 | 45.2 | 195713 | -3.3 | ||
| Total | 418302 | 100 | 474631 | -11.9 |
As you can see, each and every one of the semiconductor manufacturers has sold less during 2019 than during 2018, with significant drops in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. Intel has managed to maintain good stability and is the one who has dropped the least, which has helped them recover their crown in a market that is obviously down. If in 2018 474.631 million dollars were sold, during 2019 this figure has dropped a total of 11.9%.
The storage market is partly to blame
When we talk about semiconductor sales, we don't just talk about processors, but this also includes RAM and storage chips. And it is not a small thing, because this market represented 26.7% of semiconductor sales globally, although it has suffered a 31.5% decrease Over the previous year. As you can see, everything goes down.
Within the memory market, DRAM sales have fallen by 37.5%, something curious because during 2018 there was a large oversupply of RAM that caused its price to decrease to historical lows and, even so, its sales did not rise substantially . During 2019 the inventories of RAM suppliers were overstocked and prices fell again in the second half of the year (in total, the average price of RAM fell by 47.4% between 2018 and 2019), but that did not help to reduce the great recession that the market is suffering right now.
