2013 top 20 IC supplier ranking to see major change

MediaTek is experiencing extremely strong demand for its devices in the booming low-end smartphone business in China and other Asia-Pacific locations. In fact, MediaTek expects its application processor shipments for smartphones to reach over 200 million units this year, about double the 108 million units the company shipped in 2012.

In contrast to the companies moving up in the ranking, Fujitsu is expected to drop five places to fall out of the top-20 ranking in 2013, going from being ranked 16th in 2012 to 21st this year (the company sold its analogue and MCU business to Spansion in August of this year). Renesas is another "casualty" expected in the top-20 ranking and is forecast to fall to 11th place in 2013 from the 7th position it held in 2012.

In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies' sales are forecast to increase by seven per cent in 2013 as compared to 2012, which would be two points better than the five per cent forecast for the total worldwide semiconductor market this year. It is expected to take total semiconductor sales of over $3.7 billion to make the top-20 ranking in 2013.

There is expected to be a 60-percentage-point range of growth rates among the worldwide top 20 semiconductor suppliers in 2013 (from 44 per cent for SK Hynix to -16 per cent for Sony). The continued success of the fabless/foundry business model and the strong growth of the memory market (especially the 29 per cent DRAM market surge) this year is evident when examining the nine top-20 semiconductor suppliers that are forecast to log higher growth than the total worldwide semiconductor market (five per cent). The top nine performers in 2013 are forecast to include three memory companies (SK Hynix, Micron and Toshiba), two fabless companies (MediaTek and Qualcomm), and two pure-play foundries (TSMC and GlobalFoundries).

Renesas and Sony, two top-20 ranked companies, are forecast to register double-digit sales declines in 2013. As previously mentioned, Japan-based Fujitsu is also expected to register a double-digit decline (15 per cent) in 2013 and drop out of the top 20 ranking this year. However, it should be noted that the conversion of Japanese company semiconductor sales from yen to U.S. dollars, at 96.96 yen per dollar forecast for 2013 versus the 79.70 yen per dollar rate in 2012, is expected to have a significant impact on the sales figures for the Japanese companies. Using a constant 2012 U.S. dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate for 2013, the forecasted 2013 semiconductor sales increases of Sony, Fujitsu and Renesas would be four per cent, three per cent and two per cent, respectively.

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