Date: 15/04/2012

Semiconductor 2011 ranking: Intel and Samsung atop, rest all out-of-range

Ic Insights has released the top 25 vendors of semiconductor devices which also includes chip foundries. In 2011, the semiconductor revenue growth is less about product market opportunity and is more about individual company capabilities. The broad range product companies have not done well in 2011 except On Semiconductor, whose case is different because its due to in-organic growth of acquiring Sanyo.

Qualcomm grown its revenue by 38% and Intel by 24% . The rest all fall below 10% growth and most of the top 25 semiconductor companies' revenue has dropped compared to 2010.

Intel is exceptional both by size and growth. Intel has done this many times before and is continuing its growth saga. The difference to earlier is the 2nd big vendor was far away from Intel. But now the 2nd ranked Samsung is getting closer to Intel giving chip-market analysts the fodder to think whether Samsung going to beat Intel in future. One thing is clear, the hurdles are huge for Samsung to beat Intel. Also Intel is getting more hurdles due to ARM's strong growth. Intel's increase in revenues is also attruibuted to acquisition of Infineon's wireless biz.

The trend is, its not just the end-equipment growth/demand for revenue growth. It is going to be building roots in software, end equipment design, strategic partnership and geographic location.

Qualcomm registered annual growth rate of 38% driven by increase of CDMA based mobile station modem chipsets. Qualcomm also acquired Atheros in 2011.

The top 10 and top 25 semiconductor suppliers grew 7% and 4%, respectively, in 2011 as compared to 2010.

In case of graphic processor vendor Nvidia, IC Insights reported healthy growth in its graphics and communications processor business that helped Nvidia jump five positions and move the company to 18th place in the top 25 ranking.

The memory companies have not done well in 2011 compared to 2010.
Of the big five memory suppliers in the top 25 ranking (i.e., Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix, Micron, and Elpida), only Samsung registered 2011/2010 growth, as per IC Insights study.

In total, only 9 of the top 25 suppliers (including Infineon's 29% sales growth from continuing operations) outperformed the total worldwide semiconductor industry 2011/2010 growth rate of 2%, finds IC Insights.
Table1: Top 25 semiconductor vendor ranking in 2011 by revenue size:

Company 2010 sales in Million US$ 2011 sales in Million US$ 2011 Rank
IC Discrete Total IC Discrete Total
Intel 40154 0 40154 49697 0 49697 1
Samsung 31831 624 32455 32703 780 33483 2
TSMC 13307 0 13307 14600 0 14600 3
Texas Instruments 12364 673 13037 12182 718 12900 4
Toshiba 10374 2654 13028 10024 2721 12745 5
Renesas 9586 2064 11650 8517 2136 10653 6
Qualcomm 7204 0 7204 9910 0 9910 7
STMicro 8046 2241 10287 7117 2514 9631 8
Hynix 10432 0 10432 9403 0 9403 9
Micron 8677 415 9092 8125 446 8571 10
Broadcom 6589 0 6589 7160 0 7160 11
AMD 6494 0 6494 6568 0 6568 12
Infineon 4155 1894 6049 3560 2039 5599 13
Sony 4467 1178 5645 4065 1307 5372 14
Fujitsu 3783 364 4147 4035 395 4430 15
Freescale Semiconductor 3757 600 4357 3748 660 4408 16
NXP 3017 1202 4219 2855 1292 4147 17
Nvidia 3575 0 3575 3939 0 3939 18
Elpida 6446 0 6446 3891 0 3891 19
UMC 3965 0 3965 3760 0 3760 20
GlobalFoundries 3510 0 3510 3480 0 3480 21
Marvell 3592 0 3592 3445 0 3445 22
On Semiconductor 1442 871 2313 2000 1443 3443 23
Rohm 2089 1309 3398 1952 1351 3303 24
Panasonic 1804 1925 3729 1308 1885 3193 25
Source: IC Insights

Table2: Top 25 semiconductor vendor ranking in 2011 by growth:

Company 2011 sales in Million US$ 2011 Rank by growth
On Semiconductor 3443 49
Qualcomm 9910 38
Intel 49697 24
Nvidia 3939 10
TSMC 14600 10
Broadcom 7160 9
Fujitsu 4430 7
Samsung 33483 3
Freescale Semiconductor 4408 1
AMD 6568 1
GlobalFoundries 3480 -1
Texas Instruments 12900 -1
NXP 4147 -2
Toshiba 12745 -2
Rohm 3303 -3
Marvell 3445 -4
Sony 5372 -5
UMC 3760 -5
Micron 8571 -6
STMicro 9631 -6
Infineon 5599 -7
Renesas 10653 -9
Hynix 9403 -10
Panasonic 3193 -14
Elpida 3891 -40
Source: IC Insights