Semiconductor sales drop slightly in 2012

Gartner's latest number crunching shows more vendors lost market share than gained

Global semiconductor spend dropped 2.6 per cent in 2012, with vendors that lost market share outnumbering those that grew.

According to analyst Gartner, the top 25 semiconductor vendors’ revenue declined slightly faster – at 2.8 per cent – than the industry as a whole and accounted for 68.9 per cent of the industry’s total revenue, compared with 69 per cent in 2011.

Steve Ohr, research director at Gartner, said: “The normal drivers of semiconductor industry growth – the computing, wireless, consumer electronics and automotive electronics sectors – all suffered serious disruption in 2012.

“Even the industrial/medical, wired communications and military/aerospace sectors – ordinarily less affected by changes in consumer sentiment – suffered severe declines in semiconductor consumption. Excess inventory levels also remained a growth inhibitor.”

Topping the league table was Intel with a 16.4 per cent share of the market, but it saw sales drop 3.1 per cent on 2011 because of the declining PC market.

Samsung was second with 9.5 per cent share – and saw its sales grow 3.1 per cent compared with 2011, mainly because of the continued uptick in smartphones, but on the downside it was hit by weak DRam growth in 2012.

Also making the top five were Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Toshiba. Qualcomm – a leader in the wireless semiconductor space – saw the biggest growth in sales with a whopping 31.8 per cent, and Toshiba saw sales fall by 9.8 per cent.

The biggest loser in terms of sales in the top 10 was Renesas Electronics, which experienced a 14.1 per cent decline, according to the analyst.