Samsung becomes the world's largest chip maker by revenue

Samsung just announced record $50 billion profit for last year, and a record Q4 with $14.1 billion earned largely from selling marked-up components, rather than Galaxies. The parts in question include memory modules, displays and processors, but it's the chip business that made it rain for Samsung in 2017. Buried in the annual report is the fact that the department made $69 billion of revenue for Samsung last year, while the former king Intel (also knows as Chipzilla), made do with $63 billion.

This is a huge shift in the silicon business, no matter how you slice it, and, even though Intel's focus is on the more upscale and heretofore more profitable x86 processors, Samsung managed to throw its weight around by making everything from computer memory to mobile Exynos processors, and is a few steps ahead of the competition in terms of technology and production capacities.

Just to put things in perspective, Intel basically created the computer memory business, but ditched it during the Japanese electronics' firms boom, while Samsung licensed the production technology from the Japanese at the time, and is now the world's largest chip maker by revenue. Circle of tech life.