Top 10 semicon firms of 2007 by revenue

According to Gartner, the top 10 semiconductor firms for 2007 by revenue are: Intel, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Infineon Technologies (including Qimonda), Hynix Semiconductor, Renesas Technology, NXP Semiconductors, and NEC Electronics.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $270.3 billion in 2007, a 2.9 percent increase from 2006, according to preliminary results from Gartner Inc.

Vendor performances were mixed with two vendors in the top 10 that experienced double-digit growth and two vendors that showed declines in revenue.

"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," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "Loss of market share in an end-user application, such as a mobile phone, by a customer (a mobile phone manufacturer) can have a dramatic effect on a vendor's business."

Intel grew revenue more than twice as fast as the semiconductor market average, and it is likely to edge up its market share to 12.2 percent in 2007 from 11.6 percent in 2006.

Intel’s growth came primarily from strong shipments of mobile PCs. Armed with a strong product lineup for enthusiast desktops and servers, Intel regained lost share in those markets from AMD.

While the global market for dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) is expected to decline in 2007 due to a severe drop in prices caused by oversupply, Samsung Electronics is likely to increase its revenue by slightly higher than the overall global semiconductor market growth rate (DRAM is one the firm's main products).

Samsung's growth is driven by steady revenue growth in NAND flash memory and strong revenue growth in nonmemory areas such as application processors, media integrated circuits (IC), complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor, smart card ICs and LCD driver ICs.

Toshiba’s revenue increased 27.8 percent in 2007 to $12,504 million, gaining three places in the rankings and moving into third place. The rapid gains mainly came from NAND flash memory.

Toshiba also increased production of CMOS image sensors for mobile phones and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)/application-specific standard products (ASSPs) revenue for digital consumer electronics, including LCD TVs, next-generation DVDs (HD DVDs) and video game consoles.