Gartner Reports Semiconductor Industry Grew 5.7 Percent In 2005
"Personal computers and cellular telephones remain the largest drivers for semiconductor business," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. "The popularity of MP3 players, however, accounted for dramatic growth among flash memory vendors in 2005."
High PC demand helped Intel retain its position as the No. 1 semiconductor supplier in 2005. Intel's revenue grew 12.6 percent, twice the market average (see Table 1). Commodity memory demand bolstered the fortunes of Samsung Electronics, who now dominates most areas of the memory market, and Hynix Semiconductor, who moved into the top 10 for the first time in 2005.
Samsung held the No. 1 position in DRAM, SRAM and the fast-growing NAND flash market in 2005. Hynix's NAND flash revenue reached $1.5 billion, up from $212 million in 2004, an increase of more than 600 percent. Over all, this company grew 23 percent - the fastest growth among the top 10 semiconductor suppliers.
The entire NAND flash memory segment grew 71 percent between 2004 and 2005. Other fast growth markets included CMOS image sensors (28 percent), and consumer ASICs (14 percent). The wireless ASIC segment, where Texas Instruments was the market leader, grew 9 percent last year.
The regional trend of sales moving towards Asia/Pacific continued in 2005. The Asia/Pacific region, which includes China, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore, accounted for 44.5 percent of worldwide semiconductor revenue, and the region experienced the strongest growth in 2005 - 11 percent. The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region saw the next strongest revenue growth with 4 percent. The Americas had 1 percent growth in 2005 and Japan was flat with revenue increasing 0.2 percent.
Additional information on specific market segments and devices is available in the Gartner report "Market Share: Semiconductor Revenue, Worldwide, 2005." This report provides rankings among vendors of microprocessors and memory, DSPs, ASICs, Application-Specific Standard Products (ASSPs), analog ICs, discretes and many other semiconductor products. The revenues of top suppliers are identified in specific markets such as automotive, consumer products, wireless and wired communication, computers, computer peripherals and industrial controls. Regional market share results are also available for the Americas, EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Japan.
SOURCE: Gartner, Inc.