Taiwan Semiconductor Manufac-turing Co (TSMC,
It achieved the mark after its sales last year grew 26 percent to US$4.7 billion, according to Scottsdale, Arizona-based IC Insights. The only other company with higher sales growth was No. 2 Samsung Semiconductor, a unit of South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co, it said.
Samsung's chip sales rose 38 percent last year to US$8.7 billion, the report said.
Sales growth at Samsung and other Asian companies will be better than those of Japanese rivals this year, IC Insights said.
"In 2003, a major realignment of the Japanese semiconductor industry will continue," IC Insights said in a statement. "The Japanese companies' share has severely declined because of weakness in Japan's economy and capital-spending cutbacks by the Japanese semiconductor suppliers."
Chipmakers in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China will account for a quarter of the world's chip production by 2010, compared with 18 percent last year, IC Insights said.
Global chip sales probably will increase 12 percent this year to about US$174 billion after gaining 1.4 percent last year, according to market researcher Dataquest Inc. That still trails gains in 2000, when worldwide chip sales climbed 37 percent to a record US$204 billion.
The only company in the IC Insights rankings whose 2002 sales fell was Motorola Semiconductor, a unit of Motorola Inc.
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