14 DAY TRIAL // Gartner have released today their report regarding semiconductor revenues for 2007. According to it, the undisputed leader in chip sales is Toshiba, that achieved a 28 percent increase. The report did not reveal a spectacular turn in semiconductor sales, since it is almost identical to the iSuppli estimates that the market analysts released early this month.
Intel rapidly caught up with what the company had lost in 2006, when AMD was still competitive. Intel's presence in the top 10 shows serious growth in chip sales. In 2006, Intel had a 9.5% decrease in revenues, as AMD was making a strong presence on the market. This decrease had a heavy impact on Intel's market share, which dropped from 14.7% to 11.6%.
This year, Intel recovered from the handicap and improved its revenue by 8.2% to $32.9 billion, which raised the company's market share to 12.2%. "Intel's growth came primarily from strong shipments of mobile PCs", Gartner said. "Armed with a strong product lineup for enthusiast desktops and servers, Intel regained lost share in those markets from AMD."
The number two in revenues is Samsung, who managed to earn $20.9 billion from chip sales, which brings the company a 7.7% market share. Texas Instruments went down due to the poor revenues in 2007, that decreased by 4.2% to $11.5 billion. Texas Instruments massively produced chips for Nokia, but, in order to avoid shortages, the mobile telephony manufacturer decided to buy from other suppliers, too.
"Semiconductor vendors need to watch the performance of their end customers even closer as a major part of the industry becomes increasingly tied to consumer spending patterns", Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner, said.
AMD is not listed in top ten chip manufacturers anymore. According to iSuppli, AMD reached $5.7 billion in chip revenues, which sends the company back to the 11th place. Gartner and iSuppli made the same estimations for 2007 and put the total revenue in the semiconductor business between $270 billion and $271 billion. The 2006 results were estimated at about $260 billion.