Global semiconductor revenue rose 5.2% this year to $315.4bn while the combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors rose 6.2%, according to the latest report from Gartner.
Gartner research VP Andrew Norwood said after a weak start to 2013 due to excess inventory, revenue growth strengthened in the second and third quarters before levelling off in the fourth quarter.
"Memory, in particular DRAM, led this growth, not due to strong demand, but rather weak supply growth," Norwood said.
"In fact, the overall market faced a number of demand headwinds with PC production declining 9 percent and the premium smartphone market showing signs of saturation, with growth tilting toward lower-priced, entry-level and midrange smartphone models.
"These demand headwinds become very visible when looking at revenue growth outside of memory, where the rest of the semiconductor market could only muster 0.4 percent growth."
Despite reporting a 2.2% drop in revenue, chipmaker Intel maintained top position for the 22nd time and captured 15.2% of the 2013 semiconductor market share.
"Within the memory market DRAM was in the midst of a strong rebound following two years of revenue decline; the recovery started at the end of 2012 when the market was moving back into an undersupply due to lack of new capacity resulting in commodity DRAM pricing more than doubling during the year," Norwood added.
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MediaTek and Qualcomm topped in Gartner’s Relative Industry Performance (RIP) index, reporting growths of 35% and 28% compared to their respective markets.
The research firm pressed that four firms including Rohm, Renesas Electronics, Samsung Electronics and Sony underperformed expectations by over 10%.
During the year, Samsung maintained second position for the consecutive 12th year while its overall growth was lower than the market and its performance in the RIP index was poor.
