WASHINGTON: Chip industry revenues were 1.9% down on 2014 at $334 billion last year, according to Gartner, in contrast to IHS’ estimate of $347 billion. Big fallers in y-o-y semiconductor revenues were Qualcomm at 16.7%, Micron at 15.1% and Toshiba at 15.1%.
“2015 saw mixed performance with optoelectronics, non-optical sensors, analog and ASIC all reporting revenue growth while the rest of the market saw declines,” says Gartner’s Sergis Mushell, “strongest growth was from the ASIC segment with growth of 2.4% due to demand from Apple, followed by analogue and nonoptical sensors with 1.9% and 1.6% growth, respectively. Memory, the most volatile segment of the semiconductor industry, saw revenue decline by 0.6%, with DRAM experiencing negative growth and NAND flash experiencing growth.”
Intel had 15.4% market share with Samsung at No.2 on 11.8% market share. Intel’s y-o-y revenues fell 1.2% and would have been down more had it not been for the acquisition of Altera. The DRAM market was hit by a downturn in 2015 due to oversupply caused by weak PC demand. NAND market was able to record revenue growth of 4.1% in 2015 although the strength of the market deteriorated throughout the year.
