Intel remains largest semiconductor manufacturer

Chicago (IL) - Intel kept its position as leading semiconductor company worldwide in 2004, according to a report released by market research firm Gartner. However, Samsung once again was the fastest growing manufacturer and strengthened its position as Intel’s closest competitor.

Intel holds the top spot now for the 13th consecutive year, based on its strength in compute microprocessor sales, Gartner said. Revenues for the firm were $30.5 billion, up from $27.1 billion in 2003. A growth of 12.6 percent however was not enough to keep its market share, which dropped from 15.3 to 13.7 percent. Several competitors were able to increase their share with Samsung posting the strongest growth.

The Korean company especially benefited from its success in the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and NAND flash memory and was able to increase its revenue by 49 percent from $10.5 billion to $15.6 billion. The firm’s market share increased from 5.9 to 7.0 percent. According to Gartner, Samsung Electronics also leads the market segments of liquid crystal displays and driver chips, and it is "competing well" in microprocessors for MP3 players, digital cameras and cellular phones, Gartner said.

Texas Instruments and Infineon also were able to increase there revenue significantly (31.1 and 29.7 percent, respectively) and surpassed Renesas, which dropped from the third to the fifth position on the list.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue as a whole is on track for a 23 percent increase in 2004, to $218 billion in revenue, Gartner said. However the industry has experienced a significant slowdown in the second half of the year, according to preliminary results of the research firm.