Samsung going vertical, Qualcomm to cry, CEVA to laugh

By SemiWiki

September 28, 2012

These last days have been full of Apple related stories; maybe it’s time to discuss a new topic? Like for example Samsung, direct competitor for Apple in the smartphone market, and take a look at the company move toward more vertical integration. Everybody working in the SC industry knows that Samsung is ranked #2 behind Intel, even if the two companies SC products mix are pretty different. When Intel revenue is essentially coming from processor, Samsung SC revenue is coming from 3 families: DRAM, NAND and System LSI. As you can see from the Quarter by Quarter revenues from the last four years, System LSI revenues are drastically growing, both in value and, even more important, in percentage of overall SC sales. "System LSI" sounds almost obsolete as a name for a product line, but when you realize it represents products like Exynox (Application Processors) or CMC221S (2G/3G/4G Baseband GSM/WCDMA/LTE), in direct competition with, for example, Qualcomm MSM8960 integrated Application Processor, Texas Instruments OMAP5, or Apple A6, you then consider the System LSI name more respectfully…

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