Telecom Lead America: Intel, with total
semiconductor revenues of $51.8 billion grabbed the top spot in 2011. It
increased its share of the semiconductor market by three percent. Samsung was
the number two vendor overall with semiconductor revenues of $29 billion,
according to IDC.

 

According to IDC, worldwide semiconductor revenues
increased more than 3.7 percent year over year to $301 billion in 2011 and
semiconductor revenue growth to be in the 6-7 percent range in 2012.

 

Rounding out the top 5 chip suppliers were Texas
Instruments, Toshiba, and Renesas Electronics, the latter two benefiting from
the strong yen relative to the U.S. dollar. The next five suppliers were
Qualcomm, Hynix, STMicro, Micron, and Broadcom. Together, the top 10 vendors
represented 53 percent of total worldwide semiconductor revenues, an increase
of 3 percent over 2010. The top 25 vendors captured 72 percent of overall
semiconductor revenues for the year.

 

The study noted that device applications, such as
smartphones, media tablets and e-readers, automotive infotainment, notebook
PCs, datacenter servers, and wireless and wired communication infrastructure
drove robust consumption of semiconductors.

 

IDC said that Apple enjoyed an impressive 140 percent
year-over-year semiconductor revenue growth. Other large companies with strong
year-over-year growth were Qualcomm, ON Semiconductor, Intel, and Renesas
Electronics.

 

Small-to-medium sized companies such as Spredtrum
Communications, CoreLogic, Microsemi, Sequans, Icera, MegaChips, Nichia
Chemical, Osram, RobertBosch, Skyworks, and Cavium further experienced strong
growth in 2011.

 

Region wide, both Asia/Pacific and Americas showed growth
above the industry average, while Japan and Europe showed negative growth.

 

Among the market segments, semiconductor revenues for the
computing segment declined year over year due to the DRAM price collapse. The
consumer segment was essentially flat, while wireless communication and
automotive segments registered over 10 percent year-over-year semiconductor
revenue growth.

 

A number of mergers and acquisitions came to completion
in 2011, most notably Qualcomm – Atheros, Texas Instruments – National
Semiconductor, SMSC – Conexant, Broadcom – NetLogic, CSR – Zoran, and
Microsemi – Zarlink. This trend is expected to continue in 2012.

 

Worldwide semiconductor market driven by smartphone
demand, says ABI Research

Recently, ABI Research said that worldwide semiconductor
market was driven by the ever-increasing demand for smartphones.

 

It added that mobile handset semiconductors, including
processors, RF, power management, and wireless connectivity, grew to
more than $30 billion in 2011.

 

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