NEC Corp increased its lead at number one in the world ranking of semiconductor companies last year according to Dataquest, which measured an 11.5% increase in sales last year; Intel Corp steamed ahead of Motorola Inc to become the top North American chipmaker, and was the fastest-growing of the lot with 28%; bipolar chip sales fell 9%, and the various MOS technologies rose 17.6%, while analogue circuits saw a 12% increase in sales; MOS memory chip sales rose 6% after a 17% fall in 1990; the top 10 sees NEC with 8.5% of the world market, Toshiba Corp with 8.2%, Hitachi Ltd with 6.7%, Intel with 6.3%, Motorola 6.0%; Fujitsu Ltd with 4.8%, Texas Instruments Inc – a decade ago the world’s largest chipmaker, 4.2%; Mitsubishi Electric Corp, 4.0%, and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co moving ahead of the leading European, Philips Electronics NV with 3.7%; Philips took 3.2%.
