Samsung Electronics has retained its position as the no.1 consumer of semiconductor chips, but its growth rate in 2014 was lower than the global semiconductor market’s growth, says a new research from Gartner.
Apple and Samsung together have consumed 17 percent of total semiconductor demand in 2014, the report said.
Lenovo, Huawei, LG and Dell have registered double digit growth in semiconductor consumption in 2014.
Lenovo significantly increased its semiconductor demand in 2014 with growth of 33.9 percent, mainly due to the mergers and acquisitions.
With growth of 21.6 percent, Huawei climbed to No. 7 in 2014, up from No. 9 in 2013, while LG Electronics climbed to No. 9 in 2014, up from No. 10 in 2013, with growth of 15.9 percent.
Apple retained the second position with nearly 10 percent growth over the previous year, while Samsung recorded 5.1 percent growth in 2014.
Samsung’s slow growth is attributed to the struggle the company faced in smartphone market last year as well as its decision to withdraw from some parts of the PC market, said Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner.
Samsung Electronics and Apple together have consumed $57.9 billion of semiconductors in 2014, an increase of $3.9 billion from 2013.
“With Samsung and Apple remaining as the top contributors for the growth of semiconductor industry for four consecutive years, their decisions have considerable technology and pricing implications for the whole semiconductor industry,” said Yamaji.
The top 10 companies bought $125.6 billion of semiconductors, to account for 37 percent of semiconductor chip vendors’ worldwide revenue in 2014. This was up from $114.8 billion, accounting for 36.4 percent in 2013.
The top 10 outperformed the semiconductor buying market and grew by 9.4 percent overall.
As a result of the stabilization of memory prices from 2013, eight companies among the top 10 increased their semiconductor demand in 2014.
“The competitive landscape of the electronic equipment manufacturers and the semiconductor demand map were stable in 2014, but the slowdown in Samsung Electronics’ design TAM can be considered a big trend change,” said Yamaji.
“Samsung Electronics and Apple remained the top two, but their combined growth underperformed the total semiconductor market growth in 2014. The impact from these two giants is still huge, but it is becoming weaker while Chinese electronic equipment manufacturers, such as Lenovo and Huawei, significantly increased their importance as semiconductor chip buyers in 2014,” Yamaji added.
