Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is to fall one place to become the world’s fourth-biggest chipmaker this year due to slower revenue growth, IC Insights said yesterday.
The world’s top 15 semiconductor companies are to grow their revenues by an average of 18 percent to US$381.16 billion this year, outpacing the world semiconductor industry’s annual growth of 16 percent, the research firm said.
Samsung Electronics Co is to defend its top ranking, with total revenue forecast to grow 26 percent from last year to US$83.26 billion, IC Insights said. It attributed Samsung’s expansion to strong memorychip sales growth.
Samsung is expected to see its memorychip revenue grow 31 percent year-on-year to US$70 billion, it said, adding that memory chips are to account for 84 percent of its total sales, up from 81 percent last year.
However, its non-memory revenue is expected to grow a mere 6 percent to US$13.3 billion from US$12.5 billion last year, IC Insights added.
Intel, ranked No. 2, is expected to grow revenue by 14 percent year-on-year to US$70.15 billion, it said.
Intel lost its top ranking to Samsung in the second quarter of last year.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, lost its third-place ranking to South Korean memorychip supplier SK Hynix Inc, which ranked fourth last year.
TSMC is to see its revenue rise 6 percent year-on-year to US$34.2 billion, while SK Hynix’s revenue is to grow 41 percent year-on-year to US$37.73 billion, IC Insights said.
If TSMC were excluded from the top 15, Taiwanese handset chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) would have ranked 15th with revenue totaling US$7.9 billion this year, up only 1 percent from last year, it said.
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