Samsung on pace for at least $30B semiconductor sales in 2010, IC Insights reports

Suzanne Deffree -- EDN, May 28, 2010

IC Insights Inc has high expectations for Samsung in 2010. The market research company reported Thursday that Samsung is on pace for at least a $30 billion semiconductor sales year in 2010. Samsung had about $21.3 billion in semiconductor sales in 2009. Moreover, IC Insights said it believes that Samsung could register as much as a 50% surge in sales in 2010.

According to IC Insights, based on Samsung's recently announced $9.6 billion planned capital spending for the year, the company would be responsible for 22% of the world's total semiconductor capital expenditures and would spend about as much as Intel and TSMC combined.

Samsung was one of only four of the companies in IC Insights' Q1 top 20 semiconductor companies ranking to show 2009 over 2008 sales growth (see chart below). According to the research company, Samsung listed behind Intel in Q1 as number 2 in terms of sales, a position it held in 2009, as well.

While Samsung did not shift positions in ranking from 2009 to Q1, 10 of the 20 companies did. IC Insights noted the global economic recovery and subsequent rebound in the electronic system and semiconductor markets as cause for the "significant re-alignment" in the top 20 semiconductor company ranking.

"The surging market for both NAND flash and DRAM is responsible for much of the shakeup in the ranking," Bill McClean, president of IC Insights, said in a research bulletin. "Toshiba, Hynix, Micron, and Elpida all moved up at least one position in the top 20 list (Elpida jumped six spots)."

IC Insights noted that although the Renesas and NEC merger that created Renesas Electronics Corp was only official on April 1, 2010, in order to make future comparisons practical, the research firm ranked by the two companies' semiconductor sales for calendar year 2009 and Q1 2010. Doing so made the new entity the fourth-largest semiconductor company in the world in 2009, according to IC Insights.

"In Q1, the combined sales of the companies would have made it the sixth-largest company," McClean said. "However, given the strong performance expected by TSMC in the foundry market this year, and the strong memory-driven growth expected to be posted by Hynix, IC Insights believes that Renesas Electronics will likely drop to the seventh position for all of 2010."

IC Insights further made note of Qualcomm, which slid from 8th to 12th in the Q1 ranking, and Fujitsu, which fell from being ranked 19th in 2009 to 21st in Q1. "The first quarter of the year is always a seasonally slow one for the cell phone industry and IC Insights expects a significant rebound by Qualcomm in the second half of this year," McClean said. "Fujitsu is undergoing reorganization and streamlining of its semiconductor division and will likely stay just out of reach of the top 20 companies for the near future."

Q1 top 20 semiconductor sales leaders (in millions of dollars)

 

Q1 rank	2009 rank	Company	2009 total semi	2009/2008 % change	Q1 total semi
1	1	Intel	32,325	-6	9,485
2	2	Samsung	21,296	5	7,137
3	5	Toshiba	9,537	-8	3,241
4	3	TI	9697	-17	2,990
5	6	TSMC	8,989	-15	2,885
6	4	Renesas Electronics	9,649	-17	2,787
7	9	Hynix	6,320	2	2,455
8	7	ST	8,466	-14	2,311
9	10	Micron	5,450	-4	2,120
10	16	Elpida	3,948	9	1,684
11	11	AMD	5,403	-7	1,574
12	8	Qualcomm	6,409	-1	1,537
13	13	Infineon	4,617	-22	1,438
14	14	Broadcom	4,271	-4	1,404
15	12	Sony	5,245	-18	1,260
16	15	Panasonic	4,034	-7	1,180
17	17	NXP	3,547	-29	1,079
18	18	MediaTek	3,500	22	1,024
19	21	Nvidia	3,151	-14	1,002
20	20	Freescale	3,302	-33	972

Source: IC Insights, May 2010