Intel Corp., the world's top chipmaker, is expected to widen the gap with No. 2 Samsung Electronics Co. thanks to its purchase of Altera Corp., industry watchers said Wednesday.

The U.S.-based chip giant said earlier this week that it will acquire Altera, the world's second-largest maker of programmable logic devices and field programmable gate arrays, for $16.7 billion and merge with it.

"The combination is expected to enable new classes of products that meet customer needs in the data center and Internet of Things market segments," Intel said in its press release.

"The companies also expect to enhance Altera's products through design and manufacturing improvements resulting from Intel's integrated device manufacturing model."

Samsung narrowed its market share gap with Intel to an all-time low of 2.1 percent in the first quarter but the merger is set to give an extra push to the U.S. player for the time being, industry watchers said.

In the January-March period, Samsung's global market share stood at 11.2 percent, compared with Intel's 13.3 percent.

The merger is predicted to add some $2 billion to Intel's annual revenue, they said. Intel's sales reached $51.2 billion in 2014, while Samsung Electronics posted $37.2 billion.

The industry watchers, however, added Samsung is also making efforts to expand its share on the back of its state-of-the-art 20-nanometer dynamic random access memory products that are faster at data handling and better in saving power.

The mass production of new application processors that incorporate 14-nanometer FinFET technology also gives hope for the South Korean player to catch up with Intel, they added. (Yonhap)