[IP] fast-growing demand for these semiconductors
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jean Armour Polly <mom@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: April 15, 2006 8:55:10 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: fast-growing demand for these semiconductors
Intel rides PC demand to top of semiconductor market
Ben Ames, IDG News Service - MacCentral
Thu Apr 13, 4:47 PM ET
High demand for PCs using Pentium and Centrino processors helped
Intel preserve its ranking at the top of the semiconductor market,
which posted record revenue in 2005, according to a report from
analyst firm Gartner Inc.
Rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) grew its portion
of the microprocessor sector by 50 percent in 2005, but that effort
won it only a 12 percent share, worth US$3.8 billion, according to
Gartner analyst Richard Gordon. Intel's comparatively stodgy 13
percent growth lead to an 86 percent market share worth $27.5 billion.
...Overall, the worldwide market for semiconductors was $235 billion
in 2005, an increase of 5.7 percent from the previous year and enough
to break the record $223 billion set in 2000.
Much of that growth came from demand for commodity memory chips such
as DRAM (dynamic RAM) and SRAM (static RAM).
Consumers lined up to buy cellular phones and MP3 music players,
driving dramatic growth for memory chips and helping Samsung
Electronics Co. Ltd. maintain the second-largest market share. MP3 is
a file format for storing compressed audio data.
The most popular technology in this segment was NAND flash, which
rose 71 percent from 2004, to $12 billion.
Hynix Semiconductor Inc. rode the wave of NAND demand, reaching the
top 10 list for the first time by posting annual revenue growth of
23.1 percent, nearly double the rate of giants like Intel (12.6
percent) and Samsung (12.7 percent).
Still, Hynix lags behind the leaders with 2005 revenue of $5.7
billion compared to Intel's $34.6 billion, Samsung's $18.3 billion
and Texas Instruments Inc.'s $10.1 billion.
Other fast-growing segments of the semiconductor market included CMOS
image sensors, which are used in digital cameras, rising 28 percent,
consumer ASICs used in digital audio players (14 percent) and
wireless ASICs used in cell phones (9 percent). ASIC means
application specific integrated circuit.
Geographically, the greatest source of industry growth was the Asia/
Pacific region (including China, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore) which
produced 44.5 percent of worldwide revenue and also grew the fastest,
rising 11 percent from last year.
The Europe, Middle East and Africa region grew 4 percent, followed by
the Americas with 1 percent and Japan with a scant 0.2 percent.
more
http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20060413/tc_macworld/intel20060413_0
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