January 27th, 2012 by Mark
According to Gartner this past Tuesday (1/24/12), Apple became the biggest buyer of semiconductors last year, moving further ahead of both Samsung Electronics and Hewlett-Packard. Apple spent US$17.3 billion in 2011, up from US$12.8 billion in 2010, Gartner estimated, and the increase results mainly from increases in sales of iPhones and iPad. The success of the reconfigured MacBook Air also bumped Apple’s semiconductor demand.
Gartner go on to report that, in general, smartphones, tablets and solid-state drives underpinned semi spending in 2011. Samsung’s improved showing in the smartphone sector saw its spending up by 9.2 percent to $16.7 billion, while an unsteady PC market pushed HP’s semiconductor spending down to US$16.6 billion compared to $17.6 billion during 2010.
Fifth-placed Nokia’s semi spending dropped over 20 percent to around $9 billion, behind Dell but ahead of Sony (excluding Sony-Ericsson) and Toshiba. In eighth place was Lenovo, which saw the strongest growth among the top five PC vendors during the fourth quarter, as its shipments grew 23 percent. It also increased its semiconductor spend by 23.7 percent to $7.5 billion. The top ten semiconductor buyers spent $105.6 billion, or 35 percent of semiconductor vendors’ worldwide chip revenue. Read a fuller report over at eWeek here.
December 13th, 2011 by Mark
Some very interesting news coming out of Europe yesterday as both EE Times and Electronics Weekly reported that, in a Nordic Hardware interview, Intel’s managing director for northern Europe, Pat Bliemer, stated that the company has a 14nm process producing ICs in its laboratories. No ‘official’ news has been released by Intel yet to either confirm or deny this, but the interview, and the reaction to it, is certainly worth noting.
For example, Electronics Weekly’s David Manners covered the development in his blog -’Intel makes 14nm ICs’ – and there were some interesting comments from Malcolm Penn, CEO of industry analysts Future Horizons regarding Intel, Samsung, TSMC and AMD… It’s worth reading for the readers’ comments alone. You can read David’s blog here.
The suspense is palpable 
December 6th, 2011 by Mark
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported today that it has endorsed the projection by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) that 2011 semiconductor sales will be in the region of $302 Billion. According to the SIA’s announcement, “reaching the $300 Billion mark for the first time and representing a 1.3 percent growth rate over the record-breaking year in 2010.” Looking ahead, the WSTS predicts that the semiconductor industry will grow by 3.7% in 2012 and 5.8% in 2013. This tracks with IHS iSuppli’s predicted low single digit growth for 2012, with a rebound in growth delayed until 2013.
You can read the full SIA release here.
December 3rd, 2011 by Mark
EE Times reported December 1st that Intel is set to become a $50 billion company in 2011, with expected growth of 23%.
EE Times’ Peter Clarke reports that “Intel is benefiting from its presence in microprocessors and NAND flash, two product areas that IHS considers “hot” in 2011 and set to generate double-digit revenue growth.” Second placed Samsung is “also benefiting from NAND flash sales, in which it is the world’s leading supplier as well as progress in applications processors, CMOS image sensors and display driver ICs, but this is offset by its exposure to the DRAM market. IHS expects the DRAM market to decline by 27 percent in 2011.”
Above are the top 20 semi companies, as listed by IHS iSuppli (December 2011). The article, which can be viewed in full here, includes some interesting projections about the chip market, with IHS predicting “that ‘extremely weak’ economic conditions will keep 2012 chip market growth at a low single-digit percentage and any rebound in revenue growth will be delayed until 2013.”
November 22nd, 2011 by Mark
Interesting report by Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, SEMI Industry Research and Statistics, that examines how the Japanese semiconductor industry has recovered following the devastating events back in March.
According to Dieseldorff, “Japan’s semiconductor industry has once again proven that it can overcome disaster and recover quickly. Japan is home to a large number of semiconductor companies and has the largest share of total installed fab capacity. In addition, fabs in Japan lead in cutting-edge technology such as 24nm and 19nm NAND Flash. Japan houses the world’s two largest fabs, Flash Alliance’s Fab 4 and Fab 5 in Yokkaichi, reportedly designed for installed capacity of up to 220,000 and 240,000 wafers per month (300mm equivalents).” This technology and capacity growth has been attributed, for the most part, to Toshiba, and its alliance with SanDisk.
The article goes on to look at the share of worldwide capacity for countries with share greater than 15%, worldwide 300mm capacity, and the number of companies with volume fabs by country.
Definitely worth a look. Check it out here.
