Intel, with total semiconductor revenues of $51.8 billion in 2011, dominated the semiconductor market once again last year.
Santa Clara also registered impressive revenue growth, while increasing its overall share of the semiconductor market by a respectable three percent.
According to IDC, worldwide semiconductor revenues jumped more than 3.7% year over year to $301 billion in 2011, with Samsung weighing in as the number two vendor with revenues of $29 billion.
Rounding out the top 5 chip suppliers were Texas Instruments, Toshiba and Renesas Electronics. The next five suppliers were Qualcomm, Hynix, STMicro, Micron, and Broadcom.
“There is a trend underway toward more integration, as companies try to position themselves for the next phase of growth and as device applications become more and more intelligent and move toward supporting high-level operating systems, connectivity, and application processing capabilities,” IDC analyst Mali Venkatesan explained.
“In addition, as large companies with strong cash balances vie for competitive positions, mergers and acquisitions will be a key theme.”
Indeed, a number of mergers and acquisitions were clinched in 2011, most notably Qualcomm–Atheros, Texas Instruments–National Semiconductor, SMSC–Conexant, Broadcom–NetLogic, CSR–Zoran, and Microsemi–Zarlink. This trend is expected to continue throughout 2012.
“The current semiconductor cycle, which started mid-2011, will bottom out in the second quarter of 2012 and fab utilization rates will pick up and accelerate in the second half of this year. Overall, IDC expects 2012 semiconductor revenue growth to be in the 6-7% range,” added Venkatesan.
