Samsung Electronics Co. was the world's second-largest semiconductor vendor in the first quarter of the year, a report showed Wednesday, after posting double-digit year-on-year sales growth.

The South Korean tech juggernaut logged $17.07 billion in chip sales in the January-March period, up 15 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest McClean Report released by market researcher IC Insights.

Samsung, the world's largest memory chip supplier, racked up $16.15 billion in integrated circuit (IC) sales, while $920 million came from optoelectronic, sensor and discrete (OSD) sales.

Intel Corp. was the top semiconductor seller in the first quarter, although it was the only company among the top 15 suppliers to post a negative growth. The US chip titan posted sales of $18.67 billion, down 4 percent from a year earlier.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's No. 1 foundry firm, came in third with sales of $12.91 billion, up 25 percent from a year earlier. South Korea's SK hynix Inc. took fourth after its sales grew 26 percent on-year to $7.62 billion followed by US memory giant Micron Technology Inc., whose sales expanded 31 percent on-year to $6.58 billion in the first quarter.

The report showed semiconductor sales from the top 15 firms rose 21 percent on-year to $101.86 billion in the first quarter, beating the total industry average growth of 18 percent. If excluding Intel, the sales growth of the top 15 companies jumps to 29 percent.

Fourteen of the top 15 suppliers had semiconductor sales of at least $3 billion in the first three months of 2021.

Of the top 15, eight firms were headquartered in the United States, followed by two each in South Korea and Taiwan. The latest ranking included six fabless companies -- Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia, MediaTek, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Apple.

AMD had the highest growth rate of the top 15 in the first quarter after its sales surged 93 percent on-year to $3.44 billion. (Yonhap)