LONDON — European chip makers fared relatively poorly in IC Insights' latest rankings of IC suppliers, which shows quite a shake-up amongst the top 20.
NXP Semiconductors registered the biggest decline and ST Microelectronics also dropped a place, while Infineon Technologies managed to climb one spot in the first quarter 2008 rankings compared with the full year 2007 positions.
Fabless companies Qualcomm and Broadcom showed the biggest gains.
IC Insights (Scottsdale, AZ) suggests sales for the top 20 in the first quarter, sales in the first quarter were $46.7 billion, up 11 percent from the corresponding quarter last time, mainly due to the fact that several leading DRAM suppliers, including Qimonda, Spansion, Elpida and Nanya are no longer part of its top 20.
Although there were no surprises or movement amongst the top four (Intel, Samsung, TI and Toshiba), ST now occupies the 6th spot, compared to fifth in the 2007 ranking.
IC Insights stresses that ST's 1Q08 and 1Q07 figures do not include FMG (flash memory group) sales, which are now part of Numonyx's sales. With that proviso, the company registered a "nice" 12 percent year-over-year growth rate in 1Q08 and, the market research group notes, has a relatively positive outlook for its second quarter.
Despite a moderate 4 percent 1Q08/1Q07 sales increase, NXP fell three positions in the 1Q08 ranking to 14th from 11th.
Amongst the climbers, mobile comms chip supplier Qualcomm used a 29 percent year-over-year 1Q08 growth to jump four spots and rank as the 10th largest semiconductor supplier in 1Q08.
The third largest fabless supplier, Broadcom, also jumped four positions in the ranking and is now positioned as the 20th largest semiconductor supplier in the world.
Japanese consumer electronics powerhouse Panasonic (formerly Matsushita) jumped three places and moved into the 19th position, while NEC moved up two positions from 15th to 13th.
Nvidia, the second-largest fabless supplier, registered a "blistering" 37 percent year-over-year increase in sales to move into the 18th position in the ranking, up two places from its full-year 2007 rank.
Moving up one place in 1Q08 were TSMC (to fifth), Renesas to seventh), Sony to 8th, and Infineon (to 12th).
Heading the other way, Infineon's DRAM cousin Qimonda's nightmare continued in 1Q08 as the company dropped 10 positions from being ranked 19th overall in 2007 to 29th in 1Q08. The company endured a 1Q08/1Q07 sales decline of 52 percent.
IBM also fell out of the top 20 ranking even though its 1Q08/1Q07 sales increased 12%. IC Insights estimates the company is now ranked as the 22nd largest semiconductor supplier in the world, down from 18th in 2007.
AMD posted a solid 22 percent increase in 1Q08/1Q07 sales, yet slid two positions from 10th to 12th.
Memory suppliers Hynix (9th) and Micron (15th) each fell two spots, although Micron showed a 2 percent increase in 1Q08/1Q07 sales (to $1.4 billion) while sales at Hynix dropped a massive 35 percent to $1.67 billion), the biggest decline amongst the top 20.
Staying put in the league table (in addition to the top four) were Freescale Semiconductor (at 16th) and Fujitsu (at 17th).
The market research group notes that among the top 20 semiconductor suppliers, there was a 79-point swing from the fastest growing company (TSMC at 44 percent) to Hynix's performance.
And it adds that 14 of the top 20 companies had double-digit 1Q08/1Q07 growth rates, including the top two companies Intel and Samsung, while only two (Toshiba and Hynix) had declines.
IC Insights reiterated that it expects currency fluctuations will play a significant part in the 2008 semiconductor market figures as the strong yen and euro are converted into U.S. dollars.
"With the yen increasing in value 13 percent and the euro 14 percent in 1Q08 as compared to 1Q07, many Japanese and European companies' results are getting a "boost" when converted to U.S. dollars. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that this currency effect will also impact the worldwide semiconductor market figures when reported in U.S. dollars this year."
It also noted that in Q108, it required at least $ 1 billion worth of sales to make the top 20, and the variation was from Intel's $9.33 billion to Broadcom's $1.03 billion.
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