Category Archives: LEDs

AG Semiconductor Services, LLC (AGSS), one of the largest global suppliers of used electronics manufacturing equipment and the leader in managing large scale turnkey projects, today announced that Michael (Mike) Mardesich has joined the company in the role of senior director of sales. An industry veteran, Mardesich is tasked with developing sales strategies, managing sales and contract remarketing services and managing AGSS’ global sales force.

“Mike brings energy and intensity that are ideally suited to support the expansion of our global market presence," said Julian Gates, a Managing Director of AGSS. "He is well known throughout the electronics industry; this experience and his skill set will help solidify AGSS as the leading provider of used equipment and customer solutions to the electronics manufacturing industry."

The company also announced that former head of sales Tim Johnson will transition laterally to focus on growing AGSS’ turnkey services as well as spearhead development of future revenue channels including products and services that support non-traditional IC manufacturing such as MEMS, compound semiconductor, LED and photovoltaic. In his new role as Senior Director, Johnson will continue to support sales, remarketing and value added services as well.

Mardesich has over 30 years of experience in management, sales and equipment valuations in the electronics manufacturing used equipment industry. Prior to joining AGSS, Mardesich was the Senior Vice President of Sales with GE Capital Global Electronics Services. He also held similar positions with Comdisco Electronics Group where he was a founding member. He was an original Board Member of the SEC/N used equipment consortium.

AG Semiconductor Services, LLC is a provider of second-hand electronics manufacturing equipment and services. The company specializes in reselling pre-owned semiconductor manufacturing, IC test/assembly and printed circuit board assembly equipment acquired from leading electronics manufacturers around the world.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced today that it is introducing a new 129lm/W high efficiency, chip-on-board (COB) family of LED packages, LC013/26/40B, which features a compact light emitting surface (LES), designed for use in high performance indoor and outdoor lighting, and ideally suited for spotlight applications.

 “Samsung proudly presents its new 13, 26, and 40W, 129 lm/W high performance COB package family, based on our world class chip and phosphor technology,” said Jaap Schlejen, senior vice president, LED lighting sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. “The new COB family, is designed to meet Zhaga specifications, and has a low thermal resistance and superior heat dissipation for high reliability.”

The series – LC013/26/40B, features a 129lm/W light efficacy at 80 CRI (Color Rendering Index) and 5000K CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) and is available in 2700K, 3000K and 4000K versions. By adopting chip-on-board technology that utilizes metal core PCBs, the new COB family offers outstanding color uniformity and light quality, while achieving a high luminous flux of up to 6000lm in a single LED package.

The Samsung COB family will be available in May. Further additions to Samsung’s COB package lineup will be made later this year, to offer even more options for customers.

The Samsung’s COB family will be displayed at LIGHTFAIR International 2013 (Booth #2645), along with other LED packages, as well as new LED engines, lamps and L-Tubes. LIGHTFAIR International will be held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia from April 23rd-25th.

Recent progress in the engineering of plasmonic structures has enabled new kinds of nanometer-scale optoelectronic devices as well as high-resolution optical sensing. But until now, there has been a lack of tools for measuring nanometer-scale behavior in plasmonic structures which are needed to understand device performance and to confirm theoretical models.

semiconductor microparticles“For the first time, we have measured nanometer-scale infrared absorption in semiconductor plasmonic microparticles using a technique that combines atomic force microscopy with infrared spectroscopy,” explained William P. King, an Abel Bliss Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering (MechSE) at Illinois. “Atomic force microscope infrared spectroscopy allows us to directly observe the plasmonic behavior within microparticle infrared antennas.” 

The article describing the research, “Near-field infrared absorption of plasmonic semiconductor microparticles studied using atomic force microscope infrared spectroscopy,” appears in Applied Physics Letters.

“Highly-doped semiconductors can serve as wavelength flexible plasmonic metals in the infrared,” noted Daniel M. Wasserman, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. “However, without the ability to visualize the optical response in the vicinity of the plasmonic particles, we can only infer the near-field behavior of the structures from their far-field response. What this work gives us is a clear window into the optical behavior of this new class of materials on a length scale much smaller than the wavelength of light.”

The article compares near-field and far-field measurements with electromagnetic simulations to confirm the presence of localized plasmonic resonance. The article further reports high resolution maps of the spatial distribution of absorption within single plasmonic structures and variation across plasmonic arrays.

“The ability to measure near field behavior in plasmonic structures allows us to begin expanding our design parameters for plasmonic materials,” commented Jonathan Felts, a MechSE graduate student. "Now that we can measure the optical behavior of individual features, we can start to think about designing and testing more complex optical materials.”

The authors on the research are Jonathan Felts, Stephanie Law, Daniel M. Wasserman, and William P. King of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with Christopher M. Roberts and Viktor Podolskiy of the University of Massachusetts. The article is available online. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

AIXTRON SE today announced that the University of Cambridge has successfully commissioned another multi-wafer Close Coupled Showerhead (CCS) MOCVD reactor at its new facility at the Department of Material Science and Metallurgy. The CCS 6×2-inch system will be configured to handle single 6-inch (150mm) wafers (1×6-inch). 

“We will be using the systems to expand our research efforts for LED and electronic devices based on gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxy on 6-inch silicon wafers,” said Professor Sir Colin Humphreys, director of research in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. “We already use one CCS 6×2-inch system in our work, but the gathering pace of GaN-on-Si development means that we need an extra system with large diameter wafer handling.”

The Centre for Gallium Nitride in Cambridge,UK, not only grows nitride semiconductors, but is one of the few places in the world to have on the same site extensive advanced characterization facilities such as electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, photoluminescence (PL), and Hall effect equipment. The team also includes specialists in basic theory for understanding in detail the physical properties of nitride semiconductor materials.

 “AIXTRON is proud to continue its long-standing collaboration with the University of Cambridge and to supply another state-of-the-art CCS research system to complement the university’s existing reactor,” said Tony Pearce, managing director at AIXTRON. “Under Prof. Humphreys’ lead, the Cambridge group has developed world leading GaN-on-Si processes and we look forward to further supporting this work with this new system.”

MOCVD reactor

OLED lighting developments are taking place worldwide, with a lot of the research focused on phosphorescent OLED materials, which have a theoretical luminous efficacy four times higher than fluorescent materials. Last month, Konica Minolta unveiled its new flexible OLED lighting panels at the Lighting Fair 2013 exhibition in Tokyo. The company has developed its own blue phosphorescent materials, enabling it to commercialize the world’s first OLED panels using only phosphorescent materials.

Dual approach in OLED lighting development

Interestingly, Konica Minolta is following two paths in its development of OLED lighting. Alongside its developments of an all phosphorescent OLED panel, for which the company achieved world record performance back in 2007, the company is employing its expertise in R2R processing and is looking to develop high performing, solution-processable materials that will enable not just optimum performance but also high productivity. To that end, the company showcased fully solution processed OLED lighting panels back in 2010.

What has always been a limitation with solution processed OLEDs though is their performance characteristics, as their external quantum efficiency and lifetime have always been inferior to those of vacuum deposited OLEDs.

Konica Minolta has made strides towards bridging that gap recently, showcasing last year high performing solution processed polymer OLEDs, with performance metrics very similar to those of vacuum deposited materials, as can be seen in the graph below.

flexible OLED lighting
Comparison of external quantum efficiency and lifetime of evaporated and solution processed OLEDs at Konica Minolta. Source: Konica Minolta

Barrier layer developments

As if for completion, purposes, Konica Minolta is employing its knowhow in simultaneous deposition of multilayer coatings, vacuum deposition and dry coating and surface modification in atmospheric pressures to develop barrier layers. The company will be presenting its advances in lighting and flexible barrier layers in the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event in Tokyo in July 2013.

Alongside the developments of multilayer barriers, there’s increased activity in the development of flexible glass. Asahi Glass, alongside other companies such as Schott and Corning and NEG have demonstrated thin glass at thicknesses that allow it to be flexible. It’s important to point out though that Asahi Glass has come up with an easier way to handle the super-thin (0.1 mm) glass that is increasingly being considered for use in flexible displays. The technique uses an adsorption layer to temporarily attach the 0.1-mm-thick sheet to a 0.5-mm-thick sheet of carrier glass, which is much easier to handle during fabrication of devices.

flexible glass
Asahi Glass: Flexible glass 100microns thick, rolled in a coil.

It’s important to note though that Asahi Glass doesn’t just develop glass, but is also actively developing conductive copper nanoparticle inks, alongside other major companies such as Hitachi Chemical, Intrinsiq and many more.

The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study.

Chemists at Ohio State University have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium.

The material’s structure is closely related to that of graphene—a much-touted two-dimensional material comprised of single layers of carbon atoms. As such, graphene shows unique properties compared to its more common multilayered counterpart, graphite.  Graphene has yet to be used commercially, but experts have suggested that it could one day form faster computer chips, and maybe even function as a superconductor, so many labs are working to develop it.

 “Most people think of graphene as the electronic material of the future,” Goldberger said. “But silicon and germanium are still the materials of the present. Sixty years’ worth of brainpower has gone into developing techniques to make chips out of them. So we’ve been searching for unique forms of silicon and germanium with advantageous properties, to get the benefits of a new material but with less cost and using existing technology.”

In a paper published online in the journal ACS Nano, he and his colleagues describe how they were able to create a stable, single layer of germanium atoms. In this form, the crystalline material is called germanane.

Researchers have tried to create germanane before. This is the first time anyone has succeeded at growing sufficient quantities of it to measure the material’s properties in detail, and demonstrate that it is stable when exposed to air and water.

In nature, germanium tends to form multilayered crystals in which each atomic layer is bonded together; the single-atom layer is normally unstable. To get around this problem, Goldberger’s team created multi-layered germanium crystals with calcium atoms wedged between the layers. Then they dissolved away the calcium with water, and plugged the empty chemical bonds that were left behind with hydrogen. The result: they were able to peel off individual layers of germanane.

Studded with hydrogen atoms, germanane is even more chemically stable than traditional silicon. It won’t oxidize in air and water, as silicon does. That makes germanane easy to work with using conventional chip manufacturing techniques.

The primary thing that makes germanane desirable for optoelectronics is that it has what scientists call a “direct band gap,” meaning that light is easily absorbed or emitted. Materials such as conventional silicon and germanium have indirect band gaps, meaning that it is much more difficult for the material to absorb or emit light.

“When you try to use a material with an indirect band gap on a solar cell, you have to make it pretty thick if you want enough energy to pass through it to be useful. A material with a direct band gap can do the same job with a piece of material 100 times thinner,” Goldberger said.

The first-ever transistors were crafted from germanium in the late 1940s, and they were about the size of a thumbnail. Though transistors have grown microscopic since then—with millions of them packed into every computer chip—germanium still holds potential to advance electronics, the study showed.

According to the researchers’ calculations, electrons can move through germanane ten times faster through silicon, and five times faster than through conventional germanium. The speed measurement is called electron mobility.

With its high mobility, germanane could thus carry the increased load in future high-powered computer chips.

“Mobility is important, because faster computer chips can only be made with faster mobility materials,” Golberger said. “When you shrink transistors down to small scales, you need to use higher mobility materials or the transistors will just not work,” Goldberger explained.

Next, the team is going to explore how to tune the properties of germanane by changing the configuration of the atoms in the single layer.

Lead author of the paper was Ohio State undergraduate chemistry student Elizabeth Bianco, who recently won the first place award for this research at the nationwide nanotechnology competition NDConnect, hosted by the University of Notre Dame. Other co-authors included Sheneve Butler and Shishi Jiang of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Oscar Restrepo and Wolfgang Windl of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

The research was supported in part by an allocation of computing time from the Ohio Supercomputing Center, with instrumentation provided by the Analytical Surface Facility in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Ohio State University Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis Program. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Center for Emergent Materials at Ohio State, and the university’s Materials Research Seed Grant Program.

SPIE leaders said they were encouraged to see proposed increases in funds for scientific research and development and a greater emphasis on STEM education in President Obama’s 2014 budget proposal released last Wednesday. At the same time, they stressed the importance of making applied research high priority, and expressed concerns about some funding levels.

The White House proposal includes an 8.4 percent increase over the 2012 enacted level for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Funding would rise for the NSF to an annual $7.6 billion. The budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would increase by 5.7 percent, to $5 billion.

All told, the President’s 2014 budget proposes $143 billion for federal research and development, providing a 1 percent increase over 2012 levels for all R&D, and an increase of 9 percent for non-defense R&D.

“While the budget continues this Adminstration’s unflinching support for science and recognition of the importance of photonics to our future economy and health, I have some concerns,” said Eugene Arthurs, CEO of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. “In these times of constraint, It is very encouraging to see proposed increases for NSF, DOE science, and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), and the investment in the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) earth observations program is overdue. But it is disturbing to see both NASA and NIH R&D budgets reduced, in real terms.”

Arthurs said that the decrease for NIH is particularly troubling because health issues are changing with demographics and risks are expanding with global disease mobility. He cited recognition by NIH director Francis Collins of the potential for imaging coupled with the power and possible economies from more use of data tools as ways to address those challenges.

A strong proposal, Arthurs said, is the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative announced by the President. The initiative would be launched with approximately $100 million in funding for research supported by the NIH, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and NSF.

“The decrease in real terms, compared with 2012 budgets, for defense basic and applied research and advanced technology development is worrying,” Arthurs said. “We need to better understand the deep cuts in defense development when this is where our security has come from and also where for decades there has been much spillover into our tech industry.”

To remain competitive in the global economy, the nation would benefit from even stronger support of applied research, Arthurs said.

“Canada and the European Union are among regions that have established policies focusing priority on applied research, and for good reason,” he said. “Applied research is concerned with creating real value through solving specific problems ― creating new energy sources, finding new cures for disease, and strengthening the security and stability of communication systems. Its metrics are improvements in the functioning of society as a whole and in the quality of individual human lives, not those of laboratory animals, and in patents and new inventions that spark economic growth, not just journal citations.”

That focus on applications is reflected in work being done by the National Photonics Initiative (NPI) committee to raise awareness of the positive force of photonics on the economy and encourage policy that promotes its development. Born out of the National Academies report issued last year on “Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation,” the NPI is being driven by five scientific societies: SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics; OSA; LIA; IEEE Photonics Society; and APS.

The President’s budget proposal also moves 90 STEM programs across 11 different agencies under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education. This "reorganization" aims to "improve the delivery, impact, and visibility of STEM efforts," the budget document said.

Once a white-hot PC product that sold in the tens of millions of units annually, netbook computers are now marking their final days, with the rise of tablets causing their shipments to wind down to virtually zero after next year, according to an IHS iSuppli Compute Electronics Market Tracker Report from information and analytics provider IHS.

Shipments of netbooks this year are forecast to amount to just 3.97 million units, a plunge off the cliff of 72 percent from 14.13 million units in 2012. The market for the small, inexpensive laptops had steadily climbed for three years from the time the devices were first introduced in 2007, peaking in 2010 when shipments hit a high of 32.14 million units. Since then, however, the netbook space has imploded and gone into decline—fast.

Next year will be the last hurrah for netbooks on the market, with shipments amounting to a mere 264,000 units. By 2015, netbook shipments will be down to zero, as shown in the attached figure.

“Netbooks shot to popularity immediately after launch because they were optimized for low cost, delivering what many consumers believed as acceptable computer performance,” said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS. “Initially intended for light productivity tasks such as web browsing and email, netbooks eventually became more powerful, taking advantage of a mature PC technology that allowed cost-effective implementation of various functionalities. And though never equaling the performance of full-fledged notebooks and lacking full laptop features like an optical drive, netbooks at one point began taking market share away from their more powerful cousins. However, netbooks began their descent to oblivion with the introduction in 2010 of Apple’s iPad.”

The following year, netbook shipments dived 34 percent on what would become a trend of irreversible decline.

“The iPad and other tablets came in a new form factor that excited consumers while also offering improved computing capabilities, leading to a massive loss of interest in netbooks,” Stice said.

At the other end of the spectrum, high-end laptops were also making their appearance. Although much more costly than netbooks, they offered premium performance. Squeezed in between, netbooks could only pass off pricing as their strong point, losing out in other benchmarks that consumers deemed important, including computing power, ease of use such as touch-screen capability, and overall appeal.

From the supply end of production, the major original equipment manufacturers of notebooks will have already terminated netbook production at this point. Whatever production is left is expected to be limited, or manufacturers will simply be shipping last-time builds to satisfy contractual obligations to customers.

Mobile PCs also get hit by media tablets

Mobile PCs retained the largest share of the overall PC market in the fourth quarter last year—the latest time for which full figures are available—compared to desktop PCs and entry-level servers. Mobile PCs had about 63 percent share, compared to 34 percent for desktops and 3 percent for entry-level servers.

Nonetheless, mobile PCs continued to be sideswiped by the ongoing popularity of tablets, and new Ultrabooks and similar ultrathin PCs have yet to take off to the extent hoped for by manufacturers.

Among the computer brands, Hewlett-Packard was No. 1 during the fourth quarter with a nearly 18 percent  share of total PC shipments. China’s Lenovo was second, followed by Dell in third place, Acer in fourth, and Asus—which introduced the first netbook in 2007—in fifth.

Landing in sixth place was Toshiba, which climbed one spot from the third quarter, sending Apple one rung down to seventh. Apple struggled during the last quarter of 2012 because of constraints related to panel supply for the company’s new iMac desktop system, which kept Apple PC shipments down.

In eighth place was Samsung, trailing Apple by a tenth of a percentage point, followed by Sony and Fujitsu rounding out the Top 10.

Increased spending in NAND and flash by Micron, LEDs by Philips and Osram, and continued investments by GLOBALFOUNDRIES will create new opportunities for equipment and materials suppliers in Southeast Asia. These trends will be explored at the upcoming SEMICON Singapore 2013, which will take place May 7-9 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Center. With a focus on new technologies and products for advanced IC packaging, test, and fab efficiency, as well as in new application areas including LEDs and MEMS, the event capitalizes on Southeast Asia’s strong contribution to the global semiconductor market.

For the Southeast Asia region, capital equipment investment will see some pickup in the second half of 2013, followed by a strong recovery in 2014. Overall front-end fab equipment spending is expected to double next year from $810 million in 2013 to $1.62 billion in 2014. Foundry and memory are the two major sectors that invest most in the region. The GLOBALFOUNDRIES expansion plan at Fab 7 will be completed by mid-2014 while UMC continues to upgrade their Fab 12i capacity to 40nm process.

The Southeast Asia region’s capacity growth for front-end fabs shows two percent increase this year and an expectation of  higher growth, eight percent, in 2014, exceeding overall global capacity growth of five percent according to the SEMI World Fab Forecast.  The growth will mainly be driven by memory sector, specifically from NAND flash capacity as Micron gears up for further expansion at its Singapore NAND flash facility next year plus ongoing capacity conversion from DRAM to NAND flash at Fab 7 (Tech). Singapore is emerging to become the third largest NAND flash manufacturing country in the world by the end of 2014.  The conversion and the expansion projects will drive related semiconductor investment in the region in 2013 and 2014.     

For the assembly and test sector, Southeast Asia has long been the focal point of the industry with a large installed capacity from both IDMs and OSATs.  This position contributes to the region being the largest packaging materials consumption market in the world, representing a market size of $6.6 billion in 2013 and $6.8 billion in 2014. The region’s back-end equipment investment remain significant with over $1 billion spending each year throughout 2012 to 2014, accounting for about 17 percent of worldwide share according to SEMI’s WWSEMS.

Aside from manufacturing capacity, Southeast Asia region is now extending its value proposition to IC design and R&D areas with more joint development projects between multi-national corporations (MNC) and local institutes. SEMI expects to see a more robust semiconductor ecosystem arise from the region as a result of these endeavors and as companies seek ready access to customers throughout Asia-Pacific and South Asia.

Currently, Singapore has 14 wafer fabrication plants, including the world’s top three wafer foundries.  Singapore also has 20 semiconductor assembly and test operations, including three of the world’s top six outsourced assembly and test companies. There are about 40 IC design centers, which comprise nine of the world’s “top 10” fabless IC design companies.

SEMICON Singapore, in its 20th year, will feature over 40 programs and forums to highlight the industry’s major technology trends, and investment and expansion opportunities in manufacturing.  Forum themes include: Market Trends Briefing, Lithography Technology, Assembly Packaging Technology, 2.5D/3D-IC, LED Manufacturing Technology, Product Test, and MEMS.  Attendees can save up to 30 percent on programs by registering before April 15.

Other special programs include a job fair, a SEMICON University Program, and both an OEM Sourcing Program ad a Suppliers Search Program. These programs demonstrate SEMI Singapore’s commitment to connecting the global semiconductor manufacturers to Singapore-based resources and professions.

Despite stronger-than-expected growth during the fourth quarter, 2012 was still a miserable year for the semiconductor market and suppliers, with only eight out of the Top 25 chipmakers managing to eke out revenue growth—but nine suffering double-digit declines.

Global semiconductor revenue in 2012 declined by 2.2 percent from 2011, according to final results from the IHS iSuppli Competitive Landscaping Tool (CLT) from information and analytics provider IHS. The preliminary forecast issued by IHS in December projected a drop of 2.3 percent.

The modest improvement in the final results came from year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter that came in slightly better than estimated, topping out at a 2.8 percent increase. The preliminary estimate had predicted a 1.9 percent expansion. 

Read more: When is the semiconductor industry expected to recover?

“The last three months were the only quarter in 2012 that generated a year-over-year increase in semiconductor market revenue, but that growth was too little and too late to salvage a terrible year for chipmakers,” said Dale Ford, senior director at IHS. “Even so, the stronger performance in the fourth quarter represents a positive signal for the semiconductor market, marking the beginning of a new growth cycle in the industry that will be sustained though 2013. IHS predicts global semiconductor revenue will rise by 5.6 percent in 2013, bringing an end to the slump of 2012.”

Semiconductor body count

Semiconductor industry growth in 2012 slipped from stagnation in the first half to a slump in the second half, widely affecting various players in the market.

Among the Top 25 suppliers, the only companies to expand revenue in 2012 were No. 2 Samsung, No. 3 Qualcomm, No. 9 Broadcom, No. 11 Sony, No. 14 NXP, No.15 nVidia, No.18 MediaTek and No. 24 LSI, as presented in the attached table.

The remaining 17 suppliers suffered revenue declines. Companies whose revenue fell by double-digit percentages were No. 4 Texas Instruments, No. 5 Toshiba, No. 6 Renesas, No. 8 STMicroelectronics, No. 12 Advanced Micro Devices, No. 16 Freescale, No. 17 Elpida, No. 21 Panasonic and No. 22 On Semiconductor.

“The semiconductor downturn had an extremely broad impact, as global economic uncertainty and weakness affected companies across all regions as well as the vast majority of products and application markets,” Ford observed. “Almost every major semiconductor product market suffered a decline in 2012, with double-digit drops in the major memory and discrete categories.” 

Merger dirge

With semiconductor suppliers’ financial condition so weak, merger and acquisition (M&A) activity among the top companies was nearly non-existent in 2012—a stark contrast to the high level of activity seen in 2011.

The only major purchase was Samsung’s acquisition of a 100 percent share of the Samsung LED business from Samsung Electro-Mechanics. The results of all other top companies were not meaningfully impacted by M&A activity.

Silver linings playbook

While there was plenty of bad news in the 2012 semiconductor market, the most dramatic change for any single semiconductor supplier was actually a positive development: Qualcomm’s nearly 30 percent surge in revenue.

Qualcomm’s revenue growth of 29.2 percent launched it to the No. 3 rank in the global semiconductor market in 2012, up from No. 6 in 2011.  Its share of the semiconductor market grew by a full percentage point to 4.3 percent, up from 3.3 percent.

“In two years, Qualcomm has risen from No. 9 to No. 3 in the semiconductor rankings,” Ford noted. “This is the strongest ascension through the top ranks by any semiconductor company in recent history. Qualcomm continues to capitalize on the robust growth of semiconductor sales to the strong market for wireless devices including smartphones and media tablets.”

Only two other companies among the Top 25 achieved double-digit growth: LSI, with 22.6 percent; and Sony, with 21.8 percent. These expansions were notable achievements in such a tough market environment.

Semiconductor surprises

The bright spots in an otherwise dismal year for semiconductor growth were found in CMOS image sensors, logic ASICs, LEDs, display drivers and sensors. Growth in CMOS image sensors hit 38.8 percent, followed by logic ASICs at 19.0 percent. LEDs also expanded in the double digits at 11.9 percent. Meanwhile, growth came in at 6.9 percent for display drivers and at 6.1 percent for sensors and actuators.

The only other categories to sustain increases were logic ASSPs and standard logic components.

“Robust growth in smartphones and media tablets was key to driving growth opportunities for logic ASICs, CMOS image sensors and sensors essential to enabling new and attractive features in the exciting wireless market. LEDs also have been boosted by their continued adoption in LCD TV backlight and general purpose lighting applications.”