Top Chip Companies Outpacing Market Growth

Article By : Dylan McGrath, EE Times

Memory companies top growers, according to IC Insights

SAN FRANCISCO — Eleven of the top 15 chip suppliers in terms of sales in the first half of this year posted double digit year-over-year growth, with seven of them growing by more than 20%, according to market research firm IC Insights.

Of the seven top 15 companies that grew by more than 20%, five of them were memory suppliers — Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron Technology, Toshiba and Western Digital (SanDisk) — IC Insights said. Non-memory firms Nvidia and STMicroelectronics also grew by more than 20%, the firm noted.

Overall, sales for the top 15 suppliers in the first half of the year were up 24% in the first half of the year compared with the first half of 2017, IC Insights said. By contrast, the overall semiconductor market was up 20% year-over-year in the first half of 2018, the firm said.

The top three memory firms — Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron — each grew by more than 35% in the first half of the year, IC Insights noted. Fourteen of the top 15 suppliers had sales of more than $4 billion in the first half of the year, compared to 11 companies that held that hit that milestone in the first of 2017, the firm said.

Top 15 semiconductor company sales data for first half of 2018

Of the top 15 suppliers for the first half of the year, seven are headquartered in the U.S. (including Broadcom, which moved its headquarters to the U.S. from Singapore in April). Three of the companies are located in Europe, with two each in Taiwan and South Korea and one in Japan, according to IC Insights.

One foundry — TSMC — and four fabless companies — Broadcom, Qualcomm, Nvidia and MediaTek — are included among the top 15 chip firms.

IC Insights noted that Apple — whose A series processors are found only in Apple products — was the 16th ranked chip supplier in terms of sales in the first half of the year and would have cracked the top 15 had TSMC — which builds products for customers and doesn’t sell any of its own branded devices — not been included.

— Dylan McGrath is the editor-in-chief of EE Times. 

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