Total worldwide semiconductor revenue reached $299.4bn in 2010, up $70.7bn, or 30.9% from 2009, the largest dollar increase for the semiconductor industry in any one year, according to Gartner.
However, the industry just fell short of the milestone $300bn revenue threshold.
Gartner said that the top 25 semiconductor suppliers accounted for 69.1% of semiconductor industry revenue in 2010, and as a group, memory vendors showed the strongest growth.
Peter Middleton, principal analyst at Gartner, said the industrywide upturn was due to the combination of pent-up demand that had built in the wake of the worldwide economic recession, and rebuilding of semiconductor inventories that were significantly depleted during the recession and early recovery.
"The market began to surge in the second half of 2009, as demand recovery in a variety of market sectors resulted in strong order rates. This continued, almost frantically, during the first half of 2010 as demand soared, prices rose, and we saw lead times expanding significantly," Middleton said.
According to the report, Intel held the No. 1 position for the 19th consecutive year, with 14% share, down from 14.6% in 2009.
Intel gained market share in some markets, but it lost ground in the total market, mainly at the hands of commodity memory vendors, said the report.
Intel is followed by Samsung Electronics and Toshiba in the second and third position respectively.
Several of the top 25 vendors performed significantly better than expected according to Gartner’s RIP index. The four vendors that grew better than 10% beyond expectations on the RIP index were Broadcom, Marvell, Samsung Electronics and NXP.
In contrast, four vendors missed expectations by more than 10%: Rohm, Renesas Electronics, Nvidia and MediaTek.
