Broadcom enters top 10 chip rankings

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Broadcom Corp., Micron Technology Inc. and the new Renesas Electronics Corp. jumped into the top 10 chip rankings for 2010, according to Gartner Inc.

Falling off the top 10 list were Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG, according to the research firm.  

Total worldwide semiconductor revenue reached $299.4 billion in 2010, up $70.7 billion, or 30.9 percent from 2009, the largest dollar increase for the semiconductor industry in any one year, according to Gartner.

"The industrywide upturn was due to the combination of pent-up demand that had built in the wake of the worldwide economic recession, and rebuilding of semiconductor inventories that were significantly depleted during the recession and early recovery," said Peter Middleton, principal analyst at Gartner.

In the rankings, Intel Corp. held the No. 1 position for the 19th consecutive year, with 14 percent share, down from 14.6 percent in 2009.

Second-placed Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. had a strong year, due to the booming DRAM and NAND flash markets. At No. 3, Toshiba Corp.'s semiconductor revenue grew 28.7 percent in 2010, thanks in part to NAND.

Texas Instruments Inc. and STMicroelectronics Inc. were once again fourth and fifth, respectively. The new Renesas, which combined the old Renesas and NEC Electronics Inc., was sixth.

Hynix Semiconductor Inc. remained in 7th place. Micron jumped from 13th to 8th place in the rankings. Qualcomm Inc. fell from 6th to 9th due to ''pressures in the mobile phone space,'' said Middleton.

Broadcom entered the top 10 for the first time. ''I was not surprised,'' he said. ''They are a strong company.''

Tenth-placed Broadcom outperformed the overall industry by a considerable margin — with growth of 53 percent over 2009. This allowed it to climb two ranks and enter the top 10 for the first time. All three of Broadcom's business units — broadband, mobile and wireless, and infrastructure and networking — performed well.


AMD went from 9th place in 2009 to 13th in 2010. Infineon fell from 10th place in 2009 to 11th in 2010, according to Gartner.    

Gartner's relative industry performance (RIP) index measures the difference between industry-specific growth for a company and actual growth, showing which are transforming their businesses by growing share or moving into new markets and choosing their customers wisely.

Several of the top 25 vendors performed significantly better than expected according to Gartner's RIP index. The four vendors that grew better than 10 percent beyond expectations on the RIP index were Broadcom, Marvell, Samsung Electronics and NXP. In contrast, four vendors missed expectations by more than 10 percent: Rohm, Renesas Electronics, Nvidia and MediaTek.