Intel holds on to semiconductor supplier ranking lead

IC Insights' updated The 2013 McClean Report, which will be released later this month, will show the ranking list of the top semiconductor suppliers for the first quarter of 2013. The list includes nine US-based suppliers, four from Japan, three from Europe and two each from South Korea and Taiwan—giving a broad representation of geographic regions of pure-play foundries and fabless companies.

IC foundries are included in the top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking because IC Insights has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not as a marketshare ranking, and realises that in some cases semiconductor sales are double counted. With many of IC Insights' clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant "holes" in the list of top semiconductor suppliers. Foundries and fabless companies are each clearly identified the figure above. The above list is provided as a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries.

It should be noted that not all foundry sales should be excluded when attempting to create marketshare data. For example, although Samsung has a large amount of foundry sales, most of its sales are to Apple. Since Apple does not re-sell these devices, counting these foundry sales as Samsung semiconductor sales does not introduce double counting.

In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies' sales increased by 2 per cent in 1Q13 as compared to 1Q12, one point better than the total 1Q13/1Q12 worldwide semiconductor market increase of 1 per cent. It took semiconductor sales of almost $900 million in 1Q13 to make the top-20 ranking.