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The global semiconductor market generated $339.7 billion in revenue in 2016, according to a study conducted by Stamford-based IT research company Gartner. That figure represents a 1.5-percent growth in comparison to 2015 when the industry generated $334.8 billion in revenue. The top 25 semiconductor suppliers increased their combined market share by 7.9-percent compared to the previous period and accounted for 75.9-percent of all sales. American chipmaker Intel continues to maintain its top spot on the list with 15.9-percent of the global semiconductor market, while the South Korean electronics giant Samsung remained at the number two spot with 11.8-percent. Samsung has been the second largest semiconductor maker in the world for the past fifteen years and Intel now managed to retain its top spot for the 25th year in a row.
According to Gartner, the San Diego-based semiconductor maker Qualcomm displaced SK Hynix to take the number three spot in 2016 with a 4.5-percent share of the market, although the company’s revenues dipped by over $700 million during the year. While Qualcomm generated $16.07 billion in revenue in 2015, it recorded $15.35 billion last year. On the other hand, the two companies at the top of the leaderboard are still leading the market by a significant margin. While Intel increased its revenue from $51.69 billion in 2015 to $53.99 billion in 2016, Samsung managed to register a similar rate of growth during the past 12 months, earning $40.14 billion in revenue last year after registering $37.85 billion in 2015.
The rest of the companies populating Gartner’s list were SK Hynix, Broadcom, Micron Technology, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, NXP, and MediaTek, in that order. Among them, the one that saw the biggest jump was Broadcom, which went from number 16 on the list in 2015 to number five last year, thanks largely to its acquisition of Avago Technologies. The Avago Technologies acquisition is believed to have been in the works for some time but was only formalized last year. While Broadcom on its own managed to generate $5.21 billion in revenue in 2015, the combined entity earned $13.14 billion last year. Texas Instruments slid down to number seven in 2016 as Micron Technology moved up to take the number six spot. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek was also on an upswing last year in spite of all its troubles, increasing its revenue from $6.7 billion in 2015 to $8.69 billion in 2016.
