A report released by market analysis agency Omdia on Wednesday showed that South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix's third-quarter sales may surpass U.S. semiconductor manufacturer Intel Corporation for the first time.
According to the report, SK Hynix’s third-quarter revenue is expected to reach a new high of US$12.8 billion, surpassing Intel to become the world’s third largest chip manufacturer.
This will be the first time that SK Hynix's performance exceeds Intel's since Omdia began tracking global semiconductor industry revenue in 2002.
U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia is expected to remain first with quarterly sales of US$28.1 billion, and South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics will rank second with record quarterly sales of US$21.7 billion.
Nvidia, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are expected to account for 16%, 12.3% and 7.3% of global chip sales in the third quarter respectively.
Market analysts believe that SK Hynix has achieved such results because the artificial intelligence boom has triggered increased demand for high-value products such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips.