Samsung Surpasses Intel To Become the World's Largest Chipmaker (bloomberg.com) 87
Samsung Electronics just knocked Intel off its perch as the world's biggest chipmaker by revenue, a spot the U.S. company has held since 1992. From a report: On Tuesday, Samsung reported 2017 chip sales of $69 billion, blowing past Intel's $63 billion from last year. The switch underlines how Samsung has transformed itself from a maker of cheap televisions into a pervasive supplier of key components in smartphones and other modern computing devices. It's also a testament to the growth of memory chips, Samsung's main market.
Intel, whose processors are the heart of about 90 percent of the world's computers, didn't have a bad year. Sales grew 6 percent. Success in computers is no longer enough, though. Memory chips, a market Intel only recently got back into, are now crucial parts of smartphones, which easily outsell PCs these days. Memory chips are also finding their way into a range of new devices such as cars. One of the ironies of Samsungâ(TM)s success in memory is that itâ(TM)s a business Intel created in the 1960s.
Intel, whose processors are the heart of about 90 percent of the world's computers, didn't have a bad year. Sales grew 6 percent. Success in computers is no longer enough, though. Memory chips, a market Intel only recently got back into, are now crucial parts of smartphones, which easily outsell PCs these days. Memory chips are also finding their way into a range of new devices such as cars. One of the ironies of Samsungâ(TM)s success in memory is that itâ(TM)s a business Intel created in the 1960s.
They are on fire! (Score:5, Funny)
Good to see Samsung exploding into the market!
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Good to see Samsung exploding into the market!
With such hot products, no wonder the public is burning with anticipation.
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That's spectreacular for Samsung (Score:5, Funny)
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Sales grew 6% at Intel, which is respectable for a company its size. Sure they lost bragging rights, but what really matters is the money.
Well This Is Fake News (Score:5, Funny)
Quick Google Search says the largest chip was produced by Pringles and is on display in Idaho. It weighs 5.4 oz (150g)
It never ceases to amaze me how low quality the fact checkers are on this website.
Re:Well This Is Fake News (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, but it is NOT fake news. Clearly you Russians are now infiltrating slashdot.
That Pringles on display in Idaho is not a potato CHIP. It is a potato CRISP. A chip is a slice of a single potato. A crisp is basically mashed up potato molded into whatever shape and size they desire. It's the difference between a boneless chicken breast and a chicken nugget.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Lo... [tripadvisor.com]
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Either that wind or up doing the low grade copy for the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com]
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Thank you. Fucking pringles are not chips.
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No one can beat their 100% wafer yielding.
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Quick Google Search says the largest chip was produced by Pringles and is on display in Idaho. It weighs 5.4 oz (150g)
It never ceases to amaze me how low quality the fact checkers are on this website.
Well you failed too since lay's are factors bigger in sales which is what was discussed
90% of all computers (Score:1)
aren't PCs from a non consumer standpoint
Re:90% of all computers (Score:5, Funny)
What's a computer?
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Where do you draw the line?
PC use to stand for Personal Computer.
This would normally mean any computer that is used by a single user at a time.
My workstation at work is a personal computer, because it is provisioned for me to work on and no one else.
My phone is a personal computer, because I am the only person who should be using it.
The PC is an outdated term, because it was opposed to multi-user computers such as a mainframe where it had one big computer and many terminals hooked up to it.
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What is the USA still good at? (Score:1)
Airplanes maybe?
Or could it be cultural exportation - read Hip Hop?
I kinda worry for my US of A.
Ohh...just remembered one - fomenting chaos/wars/instability in distant lands which results into lucrative deals for [American based] arms manufacturers.
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Snide war comment aside, what is the USA good at? Same thing it's always been good at. Just because some small cheap parts manufacturer is now larger than the world's largest manufacturer of computer chips doesn't mean anything has changed.
Side note, the summary says just making chips for PCs is no longer enough. No longer enough for what? Just what is the major problem with being the worlds largest PC chip manufacturer? It's like saying Ferrari is not good racing car / premium car manufacturer just because
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Re:What is the USA still good at? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand if you want something that's built to withstand a lot of heavy duty use and likely comes with a 10-year warranty to boot, you're probably buying something manufactured in the U.S. It's just a simple reflection of labor costs. When the cost of some good or service gets lower and lower, the percentage of cost due to human labor becomes a larger part overall. This means that it doesn't make economic sense to manufacture cheap goods in the U.S. when other countries of China can make the same low quality produce at a much lower cost.
I'm far less worried about foreign manufacturing hurting the U.S. and far more worried about government bans into scientific research. Stem cell medical technology is going to be the future of medicine, and U.S. researchers have been barred from conducting research so it's going to be companies in other countries that are making the big advances that will drive the medical field forward. I can see similar issues if Congress decides to panic and ban research into AI due to similar types of fear-mongering over the possible consequences.
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The gist of this is correct. However there are plenty of countries outside the USA that are as good if not better than the USA at manufacturing quality goods. Heck even stuff manufactured in China can be as good as anything made in the USA, though admittedly the vast bulk of stuff is not.
Also some "cheap" goods just don't ship well. Apparently for example the vast bulk of your tinsel purchased in the UK is still manufactured in the UK, because stuff shipped via sea from China is rubbish by the time it gets
Re:What is the USA still good at? (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly we're moving ever close to the world of Snow Crash:
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Because Samsung is making cheaper, more power efficient parts and operating on a slimmer profit margin.
Low margin products (Score:1)
Yea yea the asian race to the bottom means a ton of products shipped and revenue. Profit is what matters at the end of the day. Intel is a shitty company but goddamn do they sell high margin chips.
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Intel has great marketing. That's America's real talent.
And getting into cryptocurrency mining (Score:2)
TechCrunch [techcrunch.com]
Article in Korean paper [thebell.co.kr]
From the Chrome translation of that page...
Intel will come back (Score:4, Insightful)
When everyone replaces their bug-ridden Intel chips with new Intel chips that are ridden with as-of-yet unidentified bugs.
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People are still using Android 4.x tablets for example, which are NOT getting patched, and have multiple, much worse, known exploits out there.
Me for one, I just can't bear to retire my original Xoom with media dock. It never leaves the local network and doesn't get random apps installed on it now, so security isn't a concern. But apps that don't run on it is a problem. At least, the store still runs. The latest Firefox, chrome and Youtube don't run any more. But Opera does and plays Youtube just fine, keeping this super solid tablet alive as a mobile browser and media screen. Does not go on the road any more. Sigh. This smacks of planned obsolesc
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I replaced my perfectly reliable Intel part with a bug ridden AMD part and I couldn't be more happy. Because the early production chip flaw was fixed by RMA and the lockups were tracked down to buggy acpi that could be circumvented. Bugs gone, but the spectacular power performance, cost performance and blessed quietness still remain.
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The link to the story is in parentheses to the right of the headline. It's been this way for a while. No one likes it.
MSDGA! (Score:2)
Ban all Unicode submitters and build a firewall to stop them from taking our character spaces!
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to survive Intel has had to cut memory prices by a factor of 360,000 !!! Don't know how they can make any money at those prices.
They lose a little bit on every one and make it up in volume.
Huge editorial fuckups (Score:1)
No link to any story, not even a tabloid mention. Obvious Apple cut and paste text.
This site is about as broken as the code it is based upon.
Really?!? (Score:2)
Lets clear this up now (Score:1)
Memory chips (Score:4, Informative)
Everybody's talking Intel vs ARM, etc., but TFS clearly says Samsung's major market is not processors, but memory chips (which I assume includes various forms of flash). The market for these things is huge, yet they are essentially commodity components. The volume of proprietary IP in a single Intel processor is vast compared to what Samsung produces. Even Samsung's processors use technology licensed from ARM. I don't think Intel is quaking in its boots just yet. The idea that Korean chaebols are huge, supply the world with manufactured goods, and make a lotta money is not new.