Qualcomm fastest growing semiconductor company, Intel still on top says Gartner

Qualcomm, designers of the highly popular Snapdragon series of chipsets plus a wide variety of wireless tech, is the fastest-growing semiconductor company according to Gartner. The two companies at the top, Intel and Samsung, were both affected by stagnation in the market in 2012.

Intel’s revenue slipped 3.1% year over year, but the company retained its leadership position for the 21st year in a row. Market share dropped a hair to 16.4% (down from 16.5%).

Samsung’s DRAM and NAND markets took a hit, but other segments picked up and the South Korean company managed a 3.1% year over year growth.

Qualcomm jumped into third position, up from 6th, with a massive 31.8% growth in revenue. That’s 18.2% better than analysts’ expectations. The company displaced Toshiba, who ranked fifth with a revenue decline of 9.8%.

Rank 2011	Rank 2012	Vendor	2011 Revenue	2012 Revenue	2011-2012 Growth (%)	2012 Market Share (%)
1	1	Intel	50,669	49,089	-3.1	16.4
2	2	Samsung Electronics	27,764	28,622	3.1	9.5
6	3	Qualcomm	9,998	13,177	31.8	4.4
4	4	Texas Instruments	11,754	11,111	-5.5	3.7
3	5	Toshiba	11,769	10,610	-9.8	3.5
5	6	Renesas Electronics	10,650	9,152	-14.1	3.1
8	7	SK Hynix	9,388	8,965	-4.5	3.0
7	8	STMicroelectronics	9,635	8,415	-12.7	2.8
10	9	Broadcom	7,160	7,846	9.6	2.6
9	10	Micron Technology	7,643	6,917	-9.5	2.3
		Others	151,343	146,008	-3.5	48.7
		Total Market	307,773	299,912	-2.6	100.0

Other than Qualcomm, only NXP managed to beat analysts’ expectations by over 10%. There are several companies that performed worse than expectations by over 10% too: Freescale, STMicroelectronics (who recently put an end to ST-Ericsson) and AMD.

Overall, Gartner gauged that the semiconductor industry declined 2.6% in total revenues in 2012 compared to 2011.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com