Samsung Electronics is not only the world's biggest seller of semiconductors,.... but it also buys the most amount of semiconductors in the world... because its IT products need non-memory chips from other suppliers.<br />Our Ko Roon-hee explains.<br /> <br />South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics was the world's biggest buyer of semiconductors last year... highlighting its presence in the demand side of the chip market as well.<br /><br />According to global market research firm Gartner, Samsung purchased around 43-point-4 billion U.S. dollars worth of semiconductors in 2018. <br />The amount marks an increase of 7-point-5 percent from the previous year,... grabbing a 9-point-1 percent share of all global semiconductor sales. <br /><br />Analysts attributed the rise to Samsung's status as one of the world's biggest producer of IT products... such as smartphones, which require many non-memory chip components.<br />Samsung needs to source its non-memory semiconductor parts from external suppliers,... because the firm is mainly focused on producing memory chips like DRAM. <br /><br />Separate data provided by research firm TrendForce shows that Samsung grabbed the top spot in the smartphone market,... with a 18-point-6 percent of the global market share in the fourth quarter of 2018. <br />To maintain their dominance in smartphones while improving its self-sufficiency rate in components,... Samsung announced last month that it will focus on nurturing its non-memory chip business as part of the company's new growth engine.<br /><br />Meanwhile, other companies on the list of top global semiconductor buyers include Silicon Valley giant Apple and Chinese tech firm Huawei. <br />The report pointed out that the Huawei's purchase of chips soared more than 45 percent on-year in 2018.<br />In fact, four among the top 10 list were Chinese companies... signaling growing competition in the smartphone and electronics industry for the year 2019.<br />Ko Roon-hee, Arirang News. <br />
