Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in the electronics industry accounted for $104.3bn or a third of semiconductors revenue in 2010, on a design total available market (TAM) basis, according IT research firm Gartner.

The top 10 companies – three companies each from the Japan, Asia/Pacific, and Americas and one company from EMEA – registered a year-over-year increase of approximately $26.3bn, an increase of 33.7% compared to 2009.

These companies put together met a third of global semiconductor demand in 2010.

According to Gartner, mobile PCs, smartphones and LCD TVs fueled semiconductor market growth in 2010 with PC vendors – HP, Apple, Dell and Lenovo increasing their design TAM market share by 32%, 65.4%, 48.3% and 55.6%, respectively.

Flat-panel TVs market was driven by Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic, which registered above 25% growth rate (2009-2010), while Nokia struggled in smartphones market with a meager 4.7% growth.

The newly forming integrated companies, such as Apple and Google, that provide hardware, software and services for PCs, smartphones, portable media players and media tablets, also certain critical services to television industry are touted to be the new growth drivers for semiconductors.

Region wise, according to Gartner senior research analyst Masatsune Yamaji, Asia/Pacific, and especially China, offers opportunities in most of the device and application market segments.

"It will be difficult for most of the semiconductor device vendors, especially replaceable general-purpose device vendors, to achieve the full design-win benefit without establishing a strong distribution network in Asia/Pacific," Yamaji said.