According to IC Insights’ latest report, the top 20 semiconductor companies’ sales increased by only 1% in 2Q15/1Q15, and Intel was still the top one. But Samsung made a big leap of 10% growth, the fastest growing company on the list, which makes Samsung one step behind the Intel. The other hand, Qualcomm was the worst performing supplier (13% decline) in the ranking, moreover, the company is on pace to post a semiconductor sales decline of 20% in calendar year 2015.
The ranking includes seven suppliers headquartered in the U.S., four in Japan, three in Taiwan, three in Europe, two in South Korea, and one in Singapore. The top-20 supplier list includes three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC) and four fabless companies.
IC Insights’ report indicated that the top 20 semiconductor companies’ sales increased by only 1% in 2Q15/1Q15, the same growth rate as the total worldwide semiconductor industry. Although the top-20 semiconductor companies registered a 1% sequential increase in 2Q15, there was a 23-point spread between Samsung, the fastest growing company on the list (10% growth), and Qualcomm, the worst performing supplier (13% decline) in the ranking. Moreover, given Qualcomm’s currently dismal guidance for 3Q15, the company is on pace to post a semiconductor sales decline of 20% in calendar year 2015.
Samsung’s excellent growth rate in 2Q15 put the company closer to catching Intel and becoming the world’s leading semiconductor supplier. In 2014, Intel’s semiconductor sales were 36% greater than Samsung’s. In 2Q15, the delta dropped by a whopping 20 percentage points to only 16%. However, with Intel providing guidance for a 3Q15/2Q15 sales increase of 8% and Samsung facing a lackluster DRAM market (primarily due to pricing pressures), additional gains toward the number one position may be difficult for Samsung to achieve in the near future.
There were two new entrants into the top 20 ranking in 1H15—Japan-based Sharp and Taiwan-based pure-play foundry UMC, which replaced U.S.-based Nvidia and AMD. AMD had a particularly rough 2Q15 and saw its sales drop 35% year-over-year. In fact, in 2Q15, the company’s sales fell below $1.0 billion for the first time since 3Q03, almost 12 years ago. It currently appears that AMD’s 2013 restructuring and new strategy programs to focus on non-PC end-use segments have yet to pay off (in addition to its sales decline, AMD lost $361 million in 1H15 after losing $403 million in 2014).
IC Insights has recently lowered its 2015 worldwide semiconductor market forecast from 5% to 2%. As was shown in Figure, the top 20 semiconductor suppliers in total had $128.3 billion in sales in 1H15. This figure was just under 50% of the top 20 companies’ full year 2014 sales of $259.1 billion. With only modest growth expected in the second half of this year for the worldwide semiconductor market, the top 20 semiconductor suppliers’ combined sales in 2015 are expected to be only about 1-2% greater than in 2014.
