Worldwide semiconductor revenue saw a 7.9% increase to $339.8bn in 2014, up from revenue of $315bn in 2013.
According to preliminary results by Gartner, the top 25 semiconductor vendors’ combined revenue increased 11.7%, which was more than the overall industry’s growth. The top 25 vendors accounted for 72.1% of total market revenue, up from 69.7% in 2013.
"As a group, DRAM vendors outperformed the rest of the semiconductor industry. This follows the trend seen in 2013 due to a booming DRAM market that saw revenue increase 31.7 per cent during 2014 as the undersupply and stable pricing continued," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner.
"In contrast to 2013, which saw revenue decline in key device categories, including ASIC, discretes and microcomponents, all device categories saw positive growth in 2014, but none could match the growth of the memory market, which grew 16.9 per cent in 2014.
"Excluding memory revenue, growth for the remainder of the market reached 5.4 per cent, but this is much better than 2013 growth of 0.8 per cent for nonmemory revenue."
Following two years of revenue decline, Intel saw a return to growth in 2014 with 4.6% growth. Intel is on pace to reach its goal of 40 million tablet processors in 2014, although these processors are being shipped at significantly discounted prices with incentives.
On the PC front, Intel continued to gain market share from AMD, and Gartner expects volume increases for both Intel’s notebook and desktop platforms compared with 2013. Intel has maintained the No. 1 market share position for the 23rd consecutive year, capturing 15.0% of the 2014 semiconductor market, down slightly from its peak of 16.5% in 2011.
| Rank 2013 | Rank 2014 | Vendor | 2013 Revenue | 2014 Estimated Revenue | 2013-2014 Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Intel | 48,590 | 50,840 | 4.6 |
| 2 | 2 | Samsung Electronics | 30,636 | 35,275 | 15.1 |
| 3 | 3 | Qualcomm | 17,211 | 19,194 | 11.5 |
| 5 | 4 | Micron Technology | 11,918 | 16,800 | 41.0 |
| 4 | 5 | SK Hynix | 12,625 | 15,915 | 26.1 |
| 6 | 6 | Toshiba | 11,277 | 11,589 | 2.8 |
| 7 | 7 | Texas Instruments | 10,591 | 11,539 | 9.0 |
| 8 | 8 | Broadcom | 8,199 | 8,360 | 2.0 |
| 9 | 9 | STMicroelectronics | 8,082 | 7,371 | -8.8 |
| 10 | 10 | Renesas Electronics | 7,979 | 7,249 | -9.1 |
| Others | 147,883 | 155,679 | 5.3 | ||
| Total | 314,991 | 339,811 | 7.9 |
"In 2014, we saw a return to production growth in the traditional PC sector, after a 10.1% decline in 2013," said Mr Norwood.
"The smartphone market continued to perform well, with production growth of around 34%, down slightly from 39.5% in 2013, although there was a distinct shift to utility and basic smartphones away from premium handsets. Tablet production, however, experienced a sharp slowdown from last year."
"DRAM revenues will hit $46.0 billion in 2014, an all-time high surpassing the previous record set back in 1995." said Mr Norwood. "However, in terms of the overall share of the semiconductor market, DRAM accounted for 13.5% in 2014, half of the 27.9% share it held back in 1995."
SK Hynix and Micron Technology benefited the most from the strong memory market, with the strongest growth of the top 10 vendors. SK Hynix saw a second strong year of revenue growth propelled by the booming DRAM market. DRAM accounts for about 80% of the company’s revenue.
