Semiconductor manufacturers TOP25 ranking behind the bittersweet

IHS iSuppli's market research shows that Samsung Electronics has grown steadily in the semiconductor industry, and in 2010 it has further approached Intel’s dominance of the chip market. For more than a decade, no company has approached this position like Samsung.

The latest announcement of the 2010 final market share ranking shows that the second-ranked Samsung accounted for 9.2% of the global chip sales, which was only 4.1% behind the US Intel who had long been the top spot. Samsung’s share in 2009 was 7.6%.

The rise of Samsung is one of the major events in the global semiconductor market in the last 10 years. When discussing Intel's competitors, experts will almost always focus on AMD. Although AMD is indeed Intel's main competitor in the micro-processing unit (MPU) market, Samsung is the rival to Intel's competition for the overall semiconductor market. For years, Intel and Samsung have been ranked first and second respectively.

In 2001, Intel’s market share was 14.9%, which was more than three times that of Samsung at the time. Samsung’s share of the year was 3.9%.

Since then, Intel’s market share has been at 11.9-14.8%. At the same time, Samsung's operating income surged 355% from 2001 to 2010, and its market share and rankings also increased.

The above chart shows the final ranking of IHS iSuppli Corporation for the world's top 25 semiconductor suppliers in 2010.

Memory business promotes Samsung's rise Samsung’s strong performance in 2010 was attributed to the surge in sales of its main semiconductor product, memory integrated circuits (ICs).

Among the major semiconductor categories, the memory IC has the largest increase of 52.4%. The second fastest growing areas were sensors and exciter, with an increase of 35.5%, and discrete components ranked third with an increase of 34.5%.

The biggest contributor to the growth of the memory sector in 2010 was DRAM, which grew 75.0%. NAND flash memory is another major player in the memory market with an increase of 38.6%.

For Samsung, taking into account its position as the world's largest DRAM and NAND supplier, the company's semiconductor revenue in 2010 increased by 59.1%, which means that its performance is much higher than the overall semiconductor industry. According to IHS iSuppli’s 2010 final sales ranking for semiconductors, global semiconductor sales in 2010 were US$304.1 billion, an increase of 32.1% from US$220.2 billion in 2009.

Other outstanding performance of the company's memory market has also boosted the market share and rankings of other major memory suppliers.

The overall market share of US Micron, South Korea's Hynix and Japan Elpida increased by 1.1, 0.7 and 0.4 percentage points respectively. With the strong growth of the memory market and the acquisition of Numonyx, Micron ranked 5th in the top 10 and rose to the 8th. Hynix and Elpida's operating income increased by 66.2% and 63.3%, respectively, which was the largest increase among the 20 largest semiconductor companies based entirely on organic growth. Elpida ranks fourth in the rankings, rising from 15th in 2009 to 11th. Hynix ranks first to sixth.

Merger impulse Renesas Electronics ranked ninth in 2009 from 2010 to fifth, thanks to the merger of Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics. In 2009, the combined operating income of the two companies was US$9.5 billion. In 2010, operating income increased by 24.7% to US$11.9 billion, a smaller increase than the overall market.

Renesas Electronics' market share in 2010 was 3.9%, still lower than Renesas Technology's 4.3%. Renesas Technology was formed in 2003 by the merger of Hitachi Semiconductor and Mitsubishi Semiconductor. In 2009, Renesas Technology's overall market share fell to 2.2%, but the share of the entities formed after the recent merger has recovered to its original level and it has entered the top five.

Significant Changers With its outstanding business execution capabilities and participation in strong market segments, Maxim Integrated Products, Marvell Technology Group, Elpida, Broadcom and Xilinx have made the greatest progress among the top 25 semiconductor companies in 2010.

Maxim's ranking jumped six places to 24th, and Marvell moved forward to 18th. The rankings of several other companies rose by four and Broadcom rose to 10th for the first time. All five companies mainly through organic growth, operating income increased by 36.0-63.3% in 2010.

Semiconductor suppliers that did not achieve robust growth through large acquisitions in 2010 included 34.4% from Texas Instruments, 36.9% from Analog Devices, and 41.8% from Infineon, Panasonic Corp. 52.5% increase. Infineon’s operating revenue for 2010 still includes the wireless sector, which was sold to Intel in early 2011.

NXP sold the set-top box business to Trident Microsystems in 2010 and also achieved a good performance with an increase of 24.3%.

Among the top 25 semiconductor suppliers, Taiwan’s MediaTek Technology Co., Ltd. experienced the most difficult situation in 2010. Its operating income was flat; Qualcomm’s growth was only 12.4%; Weiyingda’s growth was 13.1%. Qualcomm dropped from sixth to ninth, and KF Technology dropped from 16th to 19th. Wei Yingda retained his 20th ranking. Both AMD and Sony are down by 4 places, as their overall operating income growth is significantly slower than the overall market.

Semiconductor design company underperforming in 2010 The performance of semiconductor design companies was lower than that of the overall semiconductor market, which was inconsistent with the historical trend. In 2010, revenue from semiconductor design increased by only 26.0%. However, in 2010, seven semiconductor design companies ranked among the top 25, more than six in 2009. The seven companies include Qualcomm, Broadcom, AMD, Marvell Technology Group, MediaTek, Weiyingda and Xilinx.