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Thursday, April 11, 2019

Top ten chip companies for 2018

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Worldwide semiconductor revenue grew 12.5 percent last year to $474.6bn according to the latest figures from market researchers Gartner. That was weaker than the previous year (21.9 percent) as memory growth slowed to 24.9 percent versus 61.8 percent in 2017.
“Despite slowing growth, the memory market was still the largest semiconductor market, accounting for 34.3 percent of revenue,” said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. “This was driven by increases in average selling prices (ASPs) for DRAM for the majority of 2018. However, ASPs began to decline in the fourth quarter and this will continue through most of 2019 due to oversupply conditions.”
Samsung Electronics increased its lead as the No. 1 semiconductor vendor due to the booming DRAM market. Currently, 88 percent of the company’s revenue comes from memory sales. “Samsung’s lead is literally built on sand, in the form of memory silicon, and those shifting sands in 2019 will almost certainly lead to Samsung losing its No. 1 semiconductor crown to Intel in 2019,” he said. The main change was ST Microelectronics moving up from #11 to take the #8 spot.
Intel’s semiconductor revenue grew by 12.9 percent compared with 2017, despite delays in the introduction of 10 nm manufacturing process and a constrained low-end CPU supply situation in the second half of 2018. SK hynix experienced the strongest growth among the top 10 worldwide semiconductor vendors with a 37.4 percent increase in 2018:
Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by Revenue, Worldwide, 2018 (Millions of U.S. Dollars)
2018 Rank
2017 Rank
Vendor
2018 Revenue
2018 Market Share (%)
2017 Revenue
2017-2018 Growth (%)
1
1
Samsung Electronics
73,649
15.5
61,158
20.4
2
2
Intel
66,290
14.0
58,725
12.9
3
3
SK hynix
36,240
7.6
26,370
37.4
4
4
Micron Technology
29,742
6.3
22,895
29.9
5
6
Broadcom
16,261
3.4
15,405
5.6
6
5
Qualcomm
15,375
3.2
16,099
-4.5
7
7
Texas Instruments
14,593
3.1
13,651
6.9
8
11
ST Microelectronics
9,213
1.9
8,021
14.9
9
9
Western Digital
9,078
1.9
9,159
-0.9
10
10
NXP Semiconductors
9,022
1.9
8,746
3.2
Top-10
279,463
58.8
240,229
16.3
Others
(outside Top 10)
195,168
41.2
181,494
7.5
Total Market
474,631
100.0
421,723
12.5
Source: Gartner (April 2019)
The second-largest category — application-specific standard products (ASSPs) — saw growth of only 5.1 percent due to a stalling smartphone market combined with a tablet market that continues to decline. Vendors that rely heavily on these end markets to sell application processors, modems and other components in many cases saw semiconductor revenue decline. Leading vendors in these areas, including Qualcomm and MediaTek, are aggressively expanding into adjacent markets with stronger prospects for growth, including automotive and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, similar to the maturation of the PC market, a mature smartphone market is likely to continue to be a headwind in 2019 for companies with high exposure.

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