The Dataquest Inc list of the world’s top 10 semiconductor fabricators in puts Intel Corp way ahead at the top of the tree with $16.94bn sales, up 29%, with NEC Corp still in second place with $10.58bn. Motorola Inc leaps to third from fifth in 1995 with $8.44bn, Hitachi Ltd stays in fourth place with $8.06bn, and Motorola’s advance turns out to be at the expense of its partner, Toshiba Corp, relegated to fifth with $7.98bn. Texas Instruments Inc moves up one place with $7.09bn; Samsung Electronics Corp is down one with $6.2bn; Fujitsu Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp are unmoved in the next two places, but lose ground with $4.51bn and $4.2bn sales respectively. Leaping into equal ninth place from 14th comes SGS-Thomson Microelectronics NV with $4.2bn sales. Only Intel and SGS grew sales in 1996 – all the others saw their sales decline with Samsung plunging a whole 26%.
