Global semiconductor market revenues increased more than 24% year over year to $282bn in 2010, according to a new report by IDC.
The report revealed that the industry recovery was strong and broad last year across all market verticals, regions, and semiconductor device categories.
Device applications such as smartphones, media tablets and e-readers, automotive infotainment, notebook PCs, data centre servers, and wireless and wired communication infrastructure, drove robust consumption of semiconductors.
Intel, with total semiconductor revenues of $41.9bn in 2010, once again was the overall market leader. Samsung was the number two vendor overall with revenues of $27.6bn, which increased its semiconductor revenue market share by 2% over 2009.
Among the top 5 chip suppliers were Texas Instruments, Toshiba and Hynix.
Together, the top 10 vendors represented 51% of the overall market revenues, an increase of 6% over 2009.
The research firm said that notable small-medium sized companies experiencing strong growth in 2010 were Trident Microsystems, Spreadtrum Communications, NetLogic, Aptina, Seoul Semiconductor, ICERA, Cavium, and Atheros.
Apple, with its semiconductor revenues coming from A4 chips, experienced year-over-year growth of more than 130% in 2010.
Asia/Pacific, with 51% share and about 30% year-over-year revenue growth coming primarily from China, once again was the leading region for semiconductor consumption in 2010.
Growth in the Americas was strong (48%), while Japan was far below the industry average.
Among the vertical markets for semiconductor consumption, the Computing segment was still the largest at 39% of the overall market, followed by Communications with 28%.
Revenue grew above the industry average for Computing, Communications, and Industrial segments, while explosive demand for e-readers and media tablets helped temper otherwise lackluster year-over-year growth of 13.3% for the Consumer segment.
