Samsung is set to make in-roads into Intel``s lead as the world``s largest chip manufacturer in 2015, according to a list of chip companies ranked by forecast chip revenues from market research firm IC Insights.
Intel continues to suffer from its dependence on the weak personal computer market and its inability to break into the mobile phone market and will see its semiconductor sales shrink by 2 percent in 2015 to just above $50 billion, while Samsung will grow chip revenue by 10 percent to lie only $6 billion behind.

Notable losers in the ranking include Micron Technology and Qualcomm, Renesas and Toshiba. In the case of the two Japanese companies their sales declines？of 22 and 12 percent respectively？were made worse by the weakness of the yen against the dollar which has strengthened against almost all other currencies used for electronics in 2015
Companies that are set to prosper, partly due to acquisitions, include Infineon, up 16 percent after its acquisition of International Rectifier at the beginning of the year and Globalfoundries, a foundry, which jumps three places and increases sales by 15 percent partly due to its acquisition of IBM semiconductor sales in the second half of 2015.