LED venture propels Samsung atop optoelectronics ranking
Keywords:LED? CMOS? image sensor? optoelectronics?
The LED operation added $1.5 billion to Samsung's total revenues in 2012. The rest of Samsung's optoelectronics sales come from CMOS image sensors, which generated $975 million in 2012a 25 per cent increase from 2011. The report from IC Insights showed Samsung as the second-largest supplier of CMOS image sensors in 2012, positioned between top-ranked OmniVision and third-place Sony.
Samsung's huge increase in optoelectronics sales vaulted it to first place in IC Insights' top 30 O-S-D ranking for 2012 from 20th in 2011. High-brightness white LED and blue-laser pioneer Nichia in Japan moved up to second place in the O-S-D ranking from fourth place in 2011 with an 11 per cent increase in optoelectronics sales in 2012. In the 2012 O-S-D ranking, Toshiba and ST fell to third and fourth, respectively, due to steep sales declines in CMOS image sensors and double-digit drops in discretes. Toshiba and ST had been the No. 1 and No. 2 suppliers in the O-S-D marketplace since the middle of the last decade.
Suppliers of high-brightness LEDs generally moved higher in the overall O-S-D ranking in 2012 due to strong sales growth in lamp devices used for solid-state lighting systems. In addition to Samsung and Nichia moving up to the No. 1 and 2 positions in O-S-D, six other LED makers climbed higher in the top 30 ranking (Sharp, Osram, Philips, LG Innotek, Seoul Semiconductor and Toyoda Gosei). U.S.-based Cree, which makes LEDs and RF/microwave power transistors, was unchanged in the top 30 O-S-D ranking at 17th place in 2012.
Among the significant changes in the O-S-D supplier rankings was ST climbing to first place in the sensors/actuators market in 2012 from fourth in 2011. ST's sensor sales grew 19 per cent in 2012 to $791 million. Hewlett-Packard fell to fourth place in sensors/actuators last year from the top spot in 2011 due to a ten per cent decline in sales of HP's inkjet-printer actuators in 2012. In discrete semiconductors, Toshiba held its top position despite a 12 per cent drop in discretes sales in 2012.
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