April 5, 2007 – Strong sales of DRAM memory and wireless communications devices boosted several vendors in the final tally of 2006 worldwide semiconductor sales, according to new figures from Gartner Dataquest.
Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $262.7 billion, up 10.2% from 2005. “Diverging trends in key markets contributed to a moderate overall growth,” said John Barber, research director at Gartner, in a statement, adding that slowing growth in traditional markets e.g. PC processors was offset by strong gains in DRAM and wireless communications.
Intel still led the pack despite a 12% drop in sales, and saw its marketshare drop from 14.5% to 11.6%. Intel’s share loss was partly rival AMD’s gain, which witnessed an 86% surge to $7.43 billion in sales (mainly due its acquisition of ATI). But Intel’s fortunes have begun to turn, with introduction of new dual-core, 65nm-based CPUs that should help it regain lost share in 2007.
No.2 Samsung posted 9.8% sales growth just trailing the industry average, coming in at $20.14 billion in revenues Growth in DRAM, NOR Flash, PSRAM, and CMOS image sensor was offset by declining NAND flash revenue, a segment where the company saw its market share dip below 50%.
Best growth in 2006 goes to Hynix (+39.9%, $8.01 billion) and Infineon/Qimonda (+28.4%, $10.53 billion), riding strong DRAM business. AMD/ATI’s semiconductor revenues alone also grew just under 30% in 2006, Gartner notes. Texas Instruments (+18.4%) also outpaced overall industry growth thanks to its high-performance analog and DSP products lines in 2006.
Top 10 worldwide semiconductor vendors
(Revenues in US $M)
Company…………………….2005 revenue…..2006 revenue…..Growth %…..’06 marketshare (%)
Intel……………………………………34,590…………….30,437……………..-12.0………………11.6
Samsung Electronics…………18,347……………20,138………………..9.8…………………7.7
Texas Instruments……………..10,119……………11,984………………18.4……………….4.6
Infineon Technologies*…………8205……………10,533………………28.4……………….4.0
STMicroelectronics……………….8882……………..9854……………….10.9……………….3.8
Toshiba…………………………………8984……………..9783…………………8.9…………………3.7
Hynix Semiconductor……………5723……………..8007……………….39.9……………….3.0
Renesas Technology……………8101……………..7900………………..-2.5……………….3.0
Advanced Micro Devices………3995……………..7434……………….86.1……………….2.8
Freescale Semiconductor……..5599……………..6049…………………8.0………………..2.3
Others……………………………….125,744…………..140,571…………….11.8……………..53.5
TOTAL MARKET……………….238,289…………..262,690…………….10.2……………100.0
* includes Qimonda
Source: Gartner Dataquest