Five Top-20 companies with double-digit growth this year

The forecasted top-20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O S D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 2015 is depicted in Figure 2. As shown, it is expected to take just over USD 4.4 billion in sales just to make it into the 2015 top-20 ranking and seven of the top-20 companies are forecast to have 2015 sales of at least USD 12.0 billion. The ranking includes eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Japan, three in Taiwan, three in Europe, two in South Korea, and one in Singapore. The top-20 supplier list includes three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC) and five fabless companies. If the three pure-play foundries were excluded from the ranking, Japan-based Sharp would be ranked 18th, U.S.-based AMD 19th, and China-based fabless supplier HiSilicon 20th. Not all foundry sales should be excluded when creating marketshare data. For example, although Samsung is expected to have a large amount of foundry sales in 2015, some of its foundry sales were to Apple and other electronic system suppliers. Since the electronic system suppliers do not resell these devices, counting these foundry sales as Samsung IC sales does not introduce double counting. Overall, the top-20 list in Figure 2 is provided as a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries. Some highlights of the forecasted top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking for 2015 are shown below.

• In total, the top-20 semiconductor companies’ sales are forecast to be flat in 2015, one point higher than the growth rate expected for the total worldwide semiconductor industry.
• Using the 2014 exchange rates per U.S. dollar, the combined top-20 semiconductor suppliers are forecast to show a four percent increase (note: the semiconductor sales figures for Avago, ST, and NXP were not adjusted since they report their sales in U.S. dollars).
• Although the top-20 semiconductor companies are forecast register zero percent growth in 2015, there is expected to be a 52-point spread between Avago, the fastest growing company on the list (23 percent), and Renesas, the worst performing supplier (-22 percent in U.S. dollars, -11 percent in yen) in the ranking.
• In 2014, Intel’s semiconductor sales were 36 percent greater than Samsung’s. In 2015, the delta is forecast to drop by a whopping 15 percentage points to only 21 percent. Moreover, Samsung’s “currency adjusted” semiconductor sales for 2015 are forecast to be only 11 percent less than Intel’s.
• One new entrant is forecast to break into the top-20 ranking in 2015—Taiwan-based pure-play foundry UMC, which is expected to replace U.S.-based AMD. AMD is forecast to have a particularly rough 2015 with its sales expected drop 28 percent this year to about USD 4.0 billion.
• Infineon is forecast to register the highest “currency adjusted” 2015 semiconductor industry growth at 39 percent. Even if International Rectifier’s (Infineon’s purchase of IR was completed in January of this year) estimated USD 1.1 billion in 2015 sales were excluded from Infineon’s results this year, the company would still be forecast to show a 20 percent increase in sales expressed in euros.
• One of the real “star performers” on the list is Sony. As shown, even with the tremendous weakness of the yen versus U.S. dollar, the company is forecast to register an 11 percent increase in semiconductor sales when expressed in U.S. dollars and a 27 percent surge in sales in its local currency, the Japanese yen. Sony is having tremendous success in sales of image sensors and is expected to more than triple its semiconductor capital spending this year to put in additional capacity for image sensor production.
• The pending mergers of Avago and Broadcom and NXP and Freescale will have a significant impact on future top-20 rankings. The combination of Avago and Broadcom’s sales in 2015 (USD 15.4 billion) is forecast to be enough to move the company into the 6th spot while the combined 2015 sales of NXP and Freescale (USD 10.2 billion) are forecast to be enough to move the new entity into the 8th position. IC Insights believes that additional acquisitions and mergers over the next few years are likely to continue to shake up the future top-20 semiconductor company rankings.

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