Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Tech Link (Industry): Intel increases lead in semiconductor market

Bohoo to the detractors...

El Segundo (CA) - Intel successfully defended its position as the world's largest semiconductor company in 2005 and was able to increase its market share with double-digit revenue growth. In the microprocessor market, Intel lost 2.9% of market share to AMD, iSuppli said.

According to the market research firm, the semiconductor industry posted a new sales record of $237.1 billion in 2005, but only the largest manufacturers were able to cash in. While industry sales growth over 2004 was estimated to have been just 3.6%, only the three largest semiconductor companies - Intel, Samsung and Texas Instruments (TI) - were able to clearly outpace the industry average.

Intel very much was in control of the industry with revenues growing 13.0% to $35.5 billion and a global market share that increased to 15.0%. Samsung followed as a distant second with sales of $17.2 billion, an increase of 9.2% over 2004, and a market share of 7.3%. TI came in third with sales of $10.7 billion (+5.1%) and a market share of 4.5%.

Other winners in the ranking included Hynix (+20.7%), IBM (+11.5%) and Broadcom (11.3%). The three firms are ranked #11, #19 and #20, respectively. On the other side, Infineon (#6) was hit with a 9.6% revenue decline; NEC lost 12.2%, Matsushita's (#14) sales decreased by 11.5%. The spin-off of its memory unit caused even AMD (#15) to lose 23.3% of sales, according to iSuppli's research. With combined revenues of $5.97 billion in 2005, AMD/Spansion would have jumped to number eight in the rankings, up from number 11 in 2004, according to iSuppli.

"Intel's strong gains were driven by growth in the microprocessor market, which expanded by 16.1 percent in 2005," said Dale Ford, vice president at iSuppli. "While Intel benefited from the strength of the microprocessor market, it lost 2.9 percentage points of share during the year to AMD." In contrast, Intel performed better than any other competitor in the NOR flash memory market, which declined by 15.3 percent during 2005, iSuppli said.

Among fabless companies, Broadcom joined Qualcomm in the top 20 for the first time in 2005. Also, both Nvidia and ATI moved into the top 25 suppliers for the first time.

The rankings in detail:





Source:TG Daily

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