Texas Instruments Inc, a decade ago the world’s largest chipmaker, has slumped to sixth place in Dataquest’s annual table of the top semiconductor companies – leapfrogged by Intel Corp, which is now fifth compared with eighth a year ago: NEC Corp remains top with sales of $4,952m, 8.5% of the market, followed by Toshiba Corp, $4,905m, 8.4%; Hitachi Ltd, $3,927m, 6.7%; Motorola Inc is the top American with $3,692m, 6.3%; Intel’s $3,135m gave it 5.4% of the market, just ahead of Fujitsu Ltd, $3,019m, 5.2%; Texas did $2,574m, 4.4%, and the other three in the top 10 are Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co and Philips NV, which did $1,932m for a 3.3% market share; the Japanese share of the market fell to 49.5% from 52.1% on the back of declining prices for memory chips, while lusty microprocessor sales helped US firms to increase their share to 36.5% from 34.9%, the first rise in share since 1979.
