Samsung closes on Intel

Samsung, the No.2 chip-maker, continues to close the gap on Intel, the No.1 chip-maker, by taking 9.2% of the world chip market in 2010 compared to Intel’s 13.3%, says iSuppli.

In 2001, Intel’s market share at 14.9% was more than three times that of Samsung at 3.9% when Samsung ranked fifth.

Since then, Intel’s market share has ranged between 11.9% and 14.8%. Meanwhile, Samsung has seen its revenues grow by 355% from 2001 to 2010.

In 2010, Intel had revenues of $40bn while Samsung’s revenues were $28bn.

26 years ago, Samsung announced its intention of becoming the world's No.1 semiconductor company and holding onto that position for the succeeding 100 years.

Intel has now reigned for 20 years as the world No.1 taking over the top slot in 1991.

The longest reign any company ever had as No.1 was Texas Instruments, which held the crown for 25 years between 1959 and 1984.

The question is: Can Intel beat TI's record? It looks as if it will be a close run thing.

Memories drove the 2010 chip market with 52.4% growth. The next fastest-rising product area was sensors and actuators at 35.5%, followed by discretes at 34.5%.

The biggest growth driver in the memory segment in 2010 was DRAM with 75% growth , followed by NAND flash which grew 38.6%.

Samsung’s 59.1% rise in semiconductor revenue during 2010 meant it massively outperformed the overall semiconductor industry.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue amounted to $304.1bn in 2010, up 32.1% from $230.2bn in 2009.

Micron, Hynix and Elpida expanded their share of the total market by 1.1%, 0.7% and 0.4% respectively.

For Micron, the combination of strong memory market growth and its acquisition of Numonyx propelled Micron up five places into the Top 10 to No. 8.

Hynix and Elpida grew by 66.2% and 63.3% respectively—the largest increase among Top 20 semiconductor companies based entirely on organic growth.

As a result, Elpida jumped up four spots in ranking from No. 15 in 2009 to No. 11 in 2010, while Hynix advanced one place to No. 6.

Renesas went up in the rankings from No. 9 in 2009 to No. 5 in 2010 by virtue of the merger between Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics.

The two companies, which had combined revenues in 2009 of $9.5bn, grew 24.7%. less than the overall market, to $11.9bn in 2010.

The 3.9% market share in 2010 of Renesas is still lower than the 4.3% market share of Renesas formed in 2003 by the merger of Hitachi Semiconductor and Mitsubishi Semiconductor.

Renesas had seen its overall market share fall to 2.2% in 2009, but the most recent merger now boosts the merged entity back up close to the company’s original share and into the Top 5 rankings.

Maxim, Marvell, Elpida, Broadcom and Xilinx made the biggest gains in the 2010 market rankings as Maxim jumped six places to No. 24, followed by Marvell climbing five places to No. 18.

The rest moved up four places, with Broadcom moving into the Top 10 for the first time. All five companies, driven primarily by organic growth, expanded their revenues between 36% and 63.3% in 2010.

Other semiconductor suppliers achieving strong growth in 2010 without the boost of a major acquisition were TI with an increase of 34.4%, Analog Devices with 36.9%, Infineon with 41.8% and Panasonic with 52.5%.

Suppliers among the Top 25 that struggled the most in 2010 were Taiwan-based MediaTek with flat revenue, Qualcomm with growth of only 12.4% and nVidia with 13.1%. Qualcomm slipped from No. 6 to No. 9, and MediaTek fell from 16^th to 19^th in the rankings. nVidia was able to hang on to its No. 20 spot. AMD and Sony Corp. also fell in the rankings by four positions each, as their overall revenue growth significantly lagged market growth.

In a notable reversal from historical trends, fabless semiconductor suppliers underperformed the overall semiconductor market. Fabless semiconductor suppliers as a group achieved revenue growth of only 26% in 2010. However, seven fabless companies ranked among the Top 25 suppliers in 2010, up from six in 2009. The seven included Qualcomm, Broadcom, AMD, Marvell Technology Group, MediaTek, nVidia and Xilinx.

          Intel        40.4

          Panasonic 4.9

          Xilinx        2.3