Worldwide semiconductor revenue rose by over $70 billion in 2010

STAMFORD, USA: Total worldwide semiconductor revenue reached $299.4 billion in 2010, up $70.7 billion, or 30.9 percent from 2009, the largest dollar increase for the semiconductor industry in any one year, according to Gartner Inc. However, the industry just fell short of the milestone $300 billion revenue threshold.

Gartner said that the top 25 semiconductor suppliers accounted for 69.1 percent of semiconductor industry revenue in 2010, and as a group, memory vendors showed the strongest growth.

"The industrywide upturn was due to the combination of pent-up demand that had built in the wake of the worldwide economic recession, and rebuilding of semiconductor inventories that were significantly depleted during the recession and early recovery," said Peter Middleton, principal analyst at Gartner. "The market began to surge in the second half of 2009, as demand recovery in a variety of market sectors resulted in strong order rates. This continued, almost frantically, during the first half of 2010 as demand soared, prices rose, and we saw lead times expanding significantly."

Intel held the No. 1 position for the 19th consecutive year, with 14 percent share (see Table 1), down from 14.6 percent in 2009. Intel gained market share in some markets, but it lost ground in the total market, mainly at the hands of commodity memory vendors.

Table 1
Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by Revenue Estimates, 2010 (Millions of US Dollars)Note: NEC Electronics was renamed Renesas Electronics in 2Q10. This name change has been applied retrospectively to 2009 to maintain continuity. Renesas Electronics acquired Renesas Technology in 2Q10. According to Gartner's merger and acquisition policy (restated in December 2009), Renesas Technology's revenue has been attributed to Renesas Electronics for 2Q10 through 4Q10. NEC Electronics' 1Q10 revenue has been attributed to Renesas Electronics for 2010, while Renesas Technology's 1Q10 revenue ($1,432 million) has been accounted for separately.
Source: Gartner (April 2011)

Second-placed Samsung Electronics enjoyed a strong growth year due to its exposure to the booming DRAM and NAND flash markets. Memory accounted for about 80 percent of the company's sales in 2010. In the DRAM sector, the South Korean vendor was able to strengthen its No. 1 position, pushing its market share to record highs due to bit growth significantly above the rest of the market.

At No. 3, Toshiba's semiconductor revenue grew 28.7 percent in 2010. The company grew its NAND flash memory business for mobile devices, as well as its discrete and optical electronics device businesses. Revenue for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) declined in consumer electronics due to the decrease of video game business as market share shifted between component suppliers and the overall game console market started to slow. But ASIC revenue for the communications and automotive area grew with economic recovery in 2010.

Elsewhere in the top 10, tenth-placed Broadcom outperformed the overall industry by a considerable margin — with growth of 53 percent over 2009. This allowed it to climb two ranks and enter the top 10 for the first time. All three of Broadcom's business units — broadband, mobile and wireless, and infrastructure and networking — performed well.

Vendor relative industry performance
Market share tables by themselves give a good indication of which vendors did well or badly during a year, but they do not tell the whole story. More often than not, a strong or weak performance by a vendor is a result of the overall market growth of the device areas that the vendor participates in.

Gartner's relative industry performance (RIP) index measures the difference between industry-specific growth for a company and actual growth, showing which are transforming their businesses by growing share or moving into new markets and choosing their customers wisely.

Several of the top 25 vendors performed significantly better than expected according to Gartner's RIP index. The four vendors that grew better than 10 percent beyond expectations on the RIP index were Broadcom, Marvell, Samsung Electronics and NXP. In contrast, four vendors missed expectations by more than 10 percent: Rohm, Renesas Electronics, Nvidia and MediaTek.