Top 13 Intel Competitors & Alternatives in 2024

The top Intel competitors are Samsung, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, IBM, ASUS, TSMC and others. Intel is a multinational organization based in America. Currently, its headquarters are situated in Santa Clara, California. Since it was founded in 1968, Intel has over the years proved that its standing as one of the world’s leading technology company. Being ranked as the second largest semiconductor chip manufacturer only serves to strengthen the fact that Intel is indeed a world leader.

Intel is the company credited with the invention of the x86 microprocessors which are present in almost all PCs today. The company also sells these processors to most computer system producers including technology giants such as Dell, HP, and Apple. Along with the production of microprocessors, Intel is also the manufacturer of graphics chips, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and flash memory among many other products.

Intel’s market leader status is further enhanced by the numbers it posts, as, at 2023, its revenue was $12.949B while it had assets totaling $185.629B. 131,900 employees serve Intel’s customers in the company’s branches worldwide including its subsidiaries. Intel market cap as of August 22, 2023 is $138.79B. However, Intel operates in an industry that is characterized by stiff competition. The following are the top Intel competitors that compete for a market share are;

Top 13 Intel Competitors

1) Samsung

• Product type: Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1938, by Lee Byung-chul
• Founder: Lee Byung-chul
• Headquarters: Seoul, South Korea
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Han Jong-hee
• Revenue: KRW 60.01 trillion(Q2, 2023)
• Market cap:  $329.73 Billion (August 2023)
• Number of employees: 267,937 (2023)

Intel’s PC and laptop dominance is decreasing. Lesser and lesser people are buying laptops and just preferring smartphones over laptops. Even lesser people are buying PC’s and most of these are gaming PC’s where Nvidia and AMD is cutting into the market. However, the major adoption across the world is of Smartphones where Samsung is the clear leader in chip making.

Samsung is a major manufacturer of electronic components such as lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, image sensors, camera modules, and displays for clients such as Apple, Sony, HTC, and Nokia. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones and smartphones, starting with the original Samsung Solstice and later, the popularity of its Samsung Galaxy line of devices.

Samsung’s Operating profit rose sequentially to KRW 0.67 trillion in the second quarter of 2023.

Samsung not only makes chips for its own brand but also for Apple, Macbooks and many other brands in the market. Thus, Samsung is the topmost Intel Competitors and Intel is taking a good look at Samsung’s every move.

2) AMD

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1969, by Jerry Sanders III and Gordon Moore
• Founders: Jerry Sanders III and Gordon Moore
• Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, United States
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Lisa Su
• Revenue: $5.359B (June 30, 2023 )
• Market cap: $174.85B (August 21, 2023)
• Number of employees: 25,000 (2022)

AMD is renowned all over the world for the production of products such as servers, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and microprocessors among many other products. AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California in the United States of America. AMD is Intel’s biggest competitor when it comes to the manufacture of x86 microprocessors.

Founded in 1969, AMD is the top manufacturer and supplier of x86 microprocessors beaten to the first position by Intel. AMD’s dominance in the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) market was made possible by its acquisition of ATI Technologies in 2006. Since July 2014, AMD reorganized and formed two business groups; Computing and Graphics business which concerned itself with discrete GPUs, notebook and desktop chipsets and processors and Professional Graphics. The other business was Embedded, Enterprise, and semi-custom which concerned itself with engineering services, servers, semi-custom products, and royalties.

As at quarter ending June 30 of the fiscal year 2023, AMD had 25,000 employees serving in its branches while its revenue stood at $5.359B, and assets totaling $67.967B. The net income stood at $0.027B while the gross profit was $2.443B. These numbers just serve to enhance AMD’s strong market share in the industry.

3) Nvidia

• Product type: Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1993,
• Founders: Jen-Hsun Huang, Curtis Priem, and Christopher Malachowsky
• Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, United States
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Jensen Huang
• Revenue: $7.192B (April 30, 2023)
• Market cap: $1160.08B (August 21, 2023)
• Number of employees: 26,196 (2023)

Nvidia is synonymous with some of the best GPUs, cryptocurrency, and SoCs (System on a Chip) in the technology industry. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara in the United States, Nvidia has slowly carved out a name for itself especially in the gaming industry with the production of its shield tablet, shield portable and shield android TV.

Nvidia’s revenue of $7.192B and assets worth$44.460B show that the technology company has come a long way since its formation to set the standards that it has today. The net income of Nvidia stood at $2.043B  for the quarter ending April 30, 2023. As from 2014, Nvidia shifted its focus to concentrate on four key area namely; data centers, gaming, auto and professional visualization with its latest focus coming in the form of artificial intelligence.

The company has also ventured into smartphones world producing processors called Tegra for the mobile phones and tablets. It also provides entertainment and navigation systems for vehicles. As of April 30, 2023, Nvidia had approximately 26,196 employees operating in its branches and subsidiaries which include Rendering center and NVIDIA Advanced.

4) Qualcomm

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1985,
• Founders: Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi, Adelia Coffman, Klein Gilhousen, and Harvey White
• Headquarters: San Diego, California, United States
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Cristiano Amon
• Revenue: $8.451B (June 30, 2023)
• Market cap: $123.52B (August 21, 2023)
• Number of employees: 51,000 (2022)

Another company which is very popular in the Smartphone industry and hence one of the topmost Intel Competitors. Qualcomm is a telecommunications and semiconductor manufacturer based in the United States. The company rakes in most of its revenue from the manufacture of chips while most of its profit is as a result of patent licensing. Headquartered in San Diego, California, Qualcomm has over 220 operational offices worldwide with 33,500 employees serving in those offices. Qualcomm acquired NXP in April 2017 while announcing in June of the same year that it had made an investment in Amionx, a company that develops technology that is used in the prevention of fire or even explosion in batteries made from lithium-ion.

In 2015, Qualcomm refused to entertain calls of splitting into two and instead chose to keep its patent licensing and chip making business intact. Qualcomm is a fierce competitor in the technology industry and its revenue of $8.451B and net income of $1.803B show that it’s indeed a force to reckon with. Its total assets of $49.002B further show that Qualcomm is no pushover.

5) IBM

• Product type: Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1911, by Charles Ranlett Flint and Thomas J. Watson Sr.
• Founders: Charles Ranlett Flint and Thomas J. Watson Sr.
• Headquarters: Armonk, New York, United States
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Arvind Krishna
• Revenue: $15.5 billion (Q2, 2023)
• Market cap: $129.62B (August 21, 2023)
• Number of employees: 345,000 (2022)

IBM has over the years been known for the high quality of their products and services. Founded in 1911, IBM (International Business Machine Corporation) has its headquarters located in Armonk, New York. IBM is one of the market leaders and this is evidenced by the many numbers of offices that they have in the more than 175 countries that they have operations in. IBM specializes in the production of computer software, hardware, and middleware while also offering consulting services.

IBM is behind some of the modern inventions that have revolutionized the technology industry, some of these inventions include; floppy disks, ATMs, hard disks, the PC and magnetic stripe card just to mention a few. IBM is among the largest employers in the world with a worldwide workforce of close to 345,000 employees as at 2023. IBM remains the seventh largest technology company by revenue, and 49th largest overall, according to the 2022 Fortune 500.

The company is a market leader and this is emphasized by the number of awards its employees have received including 5 national medals in the field of science, 6 Turing awards, 5 Nobel prizes and 10 national medals in the field of technology among other awards. IBM’s revenue as at June 2023 was $15.5 billion while its assets were worth $132.213B. BM net income for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 was $1.583B.  further highlighting its status as a major player in the industry.

6) ASUS

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1989, by T.H. Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh, and M.T. Liao
• Founders: T.H. Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh, and M.T. Liao
• Headquarters: Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Samson Hu
• Revenue: 493.5 billion New Taiwan dollars (2022)
• Market cap:  $9.64 Billion (2023)
• Number of employees: 17,000 +

ASUS is a multinational company based in Taiwan. The company majors in phone and computer hardware as well as other electronic equipment. ASUS has its headquarters in the district of Beitou, Taipei. Founded in 1989, ASUS also manufactures mobile phones, wifi routers, desktops and servers among many other products. In 2015, ASUS was ranked fourth in the world by unit sales of PCs. ASUS has operations in close to 50 service centers in 32 countries with more than 400service partners around the globe, 17,000 employees serve at these centers as at 2022. As at 2022, ASUS’ revenue was 493.5 billion New Taiwan dollars while its profit was 14.7 billion New Taiwan dollars.  Asus earned 62.94 billion New Taiwan dollars in operating profit in 2022.

7) TSMC

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1987, by Morris Chang
• Founder: Morris Chang
• Headquarters: Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: C. C. Wei
• Revenue: $15.675B (June 30, 2023)
• Market cap: $480.05B (August 22, 2023)
• Number of employees: 73,090 (2022)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) is a semiconductor foundry that was established in 1987 and is headquartered in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan. TSMC was the first pure integrated circuit (IC) foundry in the world and has been the world’s leading dedicated semiconductor foundry ever since. The company supports a thriving ecosystem of global customers and partners with the industry’s leading process technologies and portfolio of design enablement solutions to unleash innovation for the global semiconductor industry.  Today, TSMC is the undisputed leader with a reported 49% share of the $30B foundry market segment.

TSMC posted a net profit of over NT$1 trillion for the first time in its history in 2022.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing annual net income for June 2023 was $5.927B. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing gross profit for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 was $8.483B.

8) Broadcom

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1991, by Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas
• Founders: Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas
• Headquarters: San Jose, California, United States
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Hock E. Tan
• Revenue: $8.733B (April 30, 2023)
• Market cap: $357.03B (August 22, 2023)
• Number of employees: 20,000 (2022)

Broadcom Inc. is a global technology company that designs, develops, and supplies semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. The company is focused on technology leadership and category-leading solutions. Broadcom’s roots are based in the technical heritage of AT&T/Bell Labs, Lucent, and Hewlett-Packard/Agilent. The company’s technologies connect the world, and it provides enterprise automation products powered by AI and machine learning that drive digital processes and continuous delivery pipelines.

Broadcom net income for the quarter ending April 30, 2023 was $3.481B. Broadcom operating income for the quarter ending April 30, 2023 was $4.008B. Broadcom gross profit for the quarter ending April 30, 2023 was $6.115B.

9) SK Hynix Inc.

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1983, by Samsung Group
• Founder: Samsung Group
• Headquarters: Seongnam, South Korea
• Area served: Worldwide
• Current CEO: Lee Seok-hee
• Revenue: 7.306 trillion won (Q2, 2023)
• Market cap: $61.19 Billion (August 2023)

SK Hynix Inc. is a South Korean semiconductor manufacturer that produces dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips, flash memory chips, and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors. It is the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker after Samsung Electronics and the third-largest semiconductor company. The company was founded in 1983 as Hyundai Electronic Industrial Co., Ltd. and was known as Hyundai Electronics. It has manufacturing sites in Korea, the United States, mainland China, and Taiwan. SK Hynix’s major customers include Microsoft, Apple, Asus, Dell, MSI, HP Inc., and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

With nearly four decades of experience in semiconductor manufacturing, SK Hynix has four production sites in South Korea and China, sales subsidiaries in ten countries, and research and development (R&D) centers in Italy, the United States, Taiwan, and Belarus.

For the second quarter of 2023,  The company recorded revenues of  7.306 trillion won, operating loss of 2.882 trillion won. The net income was –2,988 B KRW.

10) Micron Technology

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1978, by Douglas L. Driscoll, Ward Parkinson, and Jack R. Reed.
• Founders: Douglas L. Driscoll, Ward Parkinson, and Jack R. Reed.
• Headquarters: Boise, Idaho, United States.
• Area served: Worldwide.
• Current CEO: Sanjay Mehrotra.
• Revenue: $3.752B (May 31, 2023)
• Market cap:  $70.06B (August 21, 2023)
• Number of employees: 48,000 (2022)

Micron Technology is a global leader in the semiconductor industry, headquartered in Boise, Idaho. It was founded in 1978 as a semiconductor design consulting company and has since grown into an industry leader through technology innovations, key partnerships, and strategic acquisitions around the world. Micron produces memory and storage products used in personal computers, networks, and data centers as well as the healthcare and automotive industries. Its products include DRAM, NAND, NOR, memory cards, and SSDs.

Micron operates through four different reportable segments: Compute and Networking Business Unit (CNBU), Mobile Business Unit (MBU), Storage Business Unit (SBU), and Embedded Business Unit.

Micron Technology net income for the quarter ending May 31, 2023 was $-1.896B. Micron Technology gross profit for the quarter ending May 31, 2023 was $-0.668B.  Micron Technology operating income for the quarter ending May 31, 2023 was $-1.761B.

11) Applied Materials

• Product type: Electronics
• Industry: Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1967, by James Morgan and Michael S. Behar.
• Founders: James Morgan and Michael S. Behar.
• Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, United States.
• Area served: Worldwide.
• Current CEO: Gary E. Dickerson.
• Revenue: $6.425B(July 31, 2023)
• Market cap: $125.41B (August 22, 2023)
• Number of employees: 33,000 (2022)

Applied Materials is a global company that provides manufacturing equipment, services, and software to the semiconductor, display, and related industries. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and was founded in 1967 as a chemistry supply company. Applied Materials is a leader in materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world. Applied Materials has diversified over the years, but its focus remains on its core business of semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Applied Materials net income for the quarter ending July 31, 2023 was $1.560B. Applied Materials gross profit for the quarter ending July 31, 2023 was $2.976B. Applied Materials operating income for the quarter ending July 31, 2023 was $1.802B.

12) Texas Instruments Inc.

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry:  Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1930, by J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil Howard Green, Patrick E. Haggerty, and Eugene McDermott.
• Founders: J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil Howard Green, Patrick E. Haggerty, and Eugene McDermott.
• Headquarters: Dallas, Texas, United States.
• Area served: Worldwide.
• Current CEO: Dr. Rich Templeton.
• Revenue: $4.531B (June 30, 2023)
• Market cap: $152.49B (August 22, 2023)
• Number of employees: 33,000 (2022)

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is a global semiconductor company that designs, manufactures, tests, and sells analog and embedded processing chips. They offer a broad portfolio of over 80,000 products that help their customers efficiently manage power, accurately sense and transmit data, and provide the core control or processing in their electronic systems. TI’s products are used in various markets, including industrial, automotive, personal electronics, communications equipment, and enterprise systems.

TI owns its global manufacturing facilities and operates 12 wafer fabs, seven assembly and test factories, and multiple bump and probe facilities. TI is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. TI is often regarded as an indicator for the semiconductor and electronics industry as a whole, since the company sells to more than 100,000 customers.

Texas Instruments net income for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 was $1.714B. Texas Instruments gross profit for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 was $2.910B. Texas Instruments operating income for the quarter ending June 30, 2023 was $1.972B. As of August 2023 Texas Instruments has a market cap of $152.49 Billion. This makes Texas Instruments the world’s 71th most valuable company by market cap.

13) Advanced RISC Machine (ARM)

• Product type:  Electronics
• Industry:  Information technology (IT)
• Founded: 1990, by Hermann Hauser, David Howarth, and Chris Curry.
• Founders: Hermann Hauser, David Howarth, and Chris Curry.
• Headquarters: Cambridge, United Kingdom.
• Area served: Worldwide.
• Current CEO: Rene Haas.
• Revenue: US$2.68 billion (2023)
• Number of employees: 5,700 (2023)

Arm Ltd. is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England1. It is the primary business of Arm to design ARM processors (CPUs), as well as other chips, provide software development tools, and provide systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure, and software. Arm was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. by Acorn Computers, Apple Computer, and VLSI Technology to develop the ARM architecture. Arm Ltd. is the current owner of the ARM architecture, and it licenses the architecture to other companies.

Arm Ltd. Operating income as of 2023 is US$671 million. Net income stood at US$524 million. Total assets recorded were US$6.87 billion.

Arm processors are widely used in portable devices like digital cameras, mobile phones, home network modules, wireless communication technologies, access control, communication gateways, medical systems, and many other embedded systems.

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