Slump leaves chip rankings in chaos

2001 was a year most semiconductor makers will choose to forget.

The impact of last year's economic downturn has resulted in chaos in the chip industry, a fact highlighted in the 2001 semiconductor market share rankings by industry watcher iSuppli.

In one of the most disturbing findings, only 27 of the 127 companies featuring in the research recorded revenue growth, while out of the 42 semiconductor market sub-categories, the 32bit microcontroller sector was the only one to show any growth.

In the big leagues, only five of the 50 chip manufacturers with revenue in excess of $500m achieved any growth.

Dale Ford, director of market intelligence services for iSuppli and co-author of the semiconductor market share research, said: "The seismic forces that rocked the semiconductor industry last year reshaped the competitive landscape, bringing major changes in the rankings of the leading semiconductor suppliers.

"Only three of the top 10 semiconductor suppliers, and just six of the top 30, retained the same ranking in 2001 that they had in 2000."

iSuppli revealed that the global chip industry shrank by 31.7 per cent in 2001, while on average the 172 firms surveyed experienced negative growth of 26.8 per cent.

Intel remained top of the rankings, and its revenue drop of 22.1 per cent actually made it one of the 'winners' in the survey. AMD, which jumped from 16 to 10, was also seen as a winner, although its sales of nearly $3.9bn in 2001 were almost $2.4bn short of what was needed to enter the top 10 in 2000.

The top 10, ranked by total revenue from shipments of semiconductors worldwide, were Intel, ST, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Motorola, NEC, Infineon Technologies, Philips Semiconductors and AMD.

The hardest-hit companies were chip makers that depend on the Dram market, which suffered a horrendous year in 2001. Toshiba and Samsung Electronics both saw revenues decline by more than 41 per cent in 2001.

This resulted in a drop of one position in the rankings for Toshiba and Samsung to numbers three and five respectively.