2009 top fabless IC supplier

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AMD chases Qualcomm as second-ranked top fabless IC supplier
Over the long-term, IC Insights believes that fabless IC suppliers, and the IC foundries that serve them, will continue to become a larger force in the total IC industry.
By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- Electronic News, 1/19/2010

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http://www.icinsights.com/
There’s nothing new about Qualcomm ranking as the industry’s top fabless IC supplier as listed by
IC Insights
data. Indeed, the company has held its top rank for years. But what is new to the research house’s ranking is the presence of
AMD
, which last year began to spin off its manufacturing operations to form GlobalFoundries, allowing it to be considered for the IC Insights ranking.
By IC Insights’ count, which included all of
AMD
’s sales for 2009, the company ranked as the second largest fabless IC company in the world behind only Qualcomm last year.
IC Insights considers a company fabless when it receives the majority of its finished wafer supply from IC foundries. Its ranking numbers are based on IC sales only and do not include optoelectronic, sensor, or discrete semiconductor revenues.
Overall, of the top 25 fabless IC suppliers for 2009, nine had sales of $1 billion or more. Not including
AMD
, the top 10 fabless companies’ sales, in total, declined 4% in 2009 while the remainder of the fabless companies’ IC sales dropped 13%, IC Insights reported. “Thus, the top 10 share of total fabless company IC sales rose to 65% in 2009, up five points from 2007,” IC Insights President Bill McClean explained in a statement. “As the barriers to entry (ie, high design costs, increasingly difficult access to venture capital money, etc) rise, it appears that the fabless IC supplier listing will continue to become more ‘top-heavy’ in the future.”
Seventeen out of the top 25 fabless IC companies are headquartered in the United States, with nine out of the top 10 fabless IC companies in 2009 based there. “With only one Japanese company in the ranking (MegaChips), it is obvious that the fabless/foundry business model has not significantly caught on in Japan, and, in IC Insights’ opinion, is unlikely to do so in the near future,” McClean said. “However, as Taiwanese and Chinese IC design houses continue to advance, IC Insights expects an increasing number of Taiwan- and China-headquartered companies to eventually make the top-25 fabless supplier ranking.”
Qualcomm remained the top fabless IC supplier, registering $6.6 billion in sales in 2009, a 2% increase. According to IC Insights, the most impressive gain by a fabless IC suppler with than $1 billion in sales in 2009 was MediaTek, which registered a 22% increase in sales to $3.5 billion.
“Although the global recession had a severe negative impact on most fabless IC suppliers, many of the Taiwanese fabless companies staged a strong comeback in the second half of 2009,” McClean said, noting that four of the five top-25 fabless IC suppliers that registered a double-digit increase in sales last year were headquartered in Taiwan. “In contrast, eight of the 11 top-25 companies that registered a double-digit decline in sales in 2009 were US-based.”
IC Insights noted that fabless IC companies have been steadily increasing their share of the total IC market. In 1999, fabless IC company sales accounted for just more than 7% of the total IC market, according to the research company’s data. However, in 2009, fabless IC suppliers including
AMD
represented 23% of worldwide IC sales, IC Insights reported.
“Moreover, IC Insights forecasts that, in 2014, fabless IC companies will command at least 27% of the total IC market (especially as more large companies like LSI, Agere, and
AMD
become fabless over the next five years). Over the long-term, IC Insights believes that fabless IC suppliers, and the IC foundries that serve them, will continue to become a larger force in the total IC industry,” McClean concluded.



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