Samsung buys more chips than apple now. Aivars Lode Avantce.

Samsung Moves Past Apple To Be World's No. 1 Chip Customer

Samsung in 2012 surpassed Apple to become the world’s leading buyer of semiconductor products, according to new data from Gartner.

The two companies combined consumed $45.3 billion of semiconductors in 2012, Gartner says, up $7.9 billion from a year ago, and accounting for 15.2% of the total market. Samsung was 8% of the chip market last year, while Apple was 7.2% of the market. They were followed by Hewlett-Packard (4.7% of the market), Dell (2.9%) and Sony (2.7%). Rounding out the top 10 were Lenovo,Toshiba, LG, Cisco and Nokia.

The 10 largest customers combined accounted for 36% of the worldwide semiconductor market.

“Although Samsung and Apple continue to go from strength to strength, other leading electronic equipment makers fared less well, and six of the top 10 reduced their demand in 2012,” Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. “In addition to a weak macroeconomic situation, a dramatic change in consumer demand contributed to a reduction in semiconductor demand in 2012. The PC market still represented the largest sector for chip demand, but desktop and mobile PCs did not sell well, as consumers’ interest shifted to new mobile computing devices like smartphones and media tablets. This shift caused a substantial decrease in semiconductor demand in 2012, as the semiconductor content of a smartphone or a media tablet is far less than that of a PC.”