Recent reports by the popular market research firm Gartner reveals that the total worth of business conducted by Samsung and Apple in the semiconductor industry is about $59 billion, which constitutes 17.7% of the entire semiconductor business in the world. While the numbers are astounding, the rankings weren't really a surprise as it has been the same for the last five years. The deductions and estimations that were made from the reports were however, more interesting.

Total revenue brought in from the chip business suffered a decline of 1% in 2015 when compared to 2014. Samsung's own chip demands declined by 3.6% last year. Apple on the other hand, saw its semiconductor needs rise by 7.1% in 2015, which added an extra $800 million to last year's tally.

In spite of the fact that the semiconductor business as a whole isn't doing too well, Samsung will have its work cut out because it has now become the supplier of high-end chips for both Qualcomm and Apple; two of the biggest names in the silicon business. Nonetheless, as far as the title of the world's leading chip consumer is concerned, it looks like Apple is going to take it by the end of 2016.

Source

There was a big upset last quarter when Apple toppled Samsung from the company's seemingly perpetual hold on the number one position in regard to the global smartphone market share. Of course that was a direct result of the infamous Note 7 disaster and the fact that Samsung did not have any recent major players in the smartphone market during the Holiday season, while every other company did, including Apple. At the end of Q4, 2016, Apple was the global market leader in the smartphone business with a 20.3% market share. Samsung had to settle for the second position with just 18.5% of the market share.

As expected, the tables have changed significantly, according to a new report published by the TrendForce analytics team. Samsung has taken back its number one position from Apple with a whopping 26.1% global market share at the end of Q1, 2017, pushing Apple back to the second position with only 16.9% market share. Considering that the S8 and the S8+ have not even been released yet, we would say these are truly impressive figures and Samsung has finally overcome the shadow of the failed Note 7 now. As the S8 and S8+ will hit stores all around the world in a few weeks, we expect that Q2 results for 2017 will be even more impressive for the Korean giant, despite all the recent controversies surrounding the conglomerate.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)