It's a pretty safe bet that if you were asked to name the leading chip manufacturer, you'd guess right: it's Intel. If you were asked for the top three in this $274 billion market, you'd probably get the other two wrong. They are Samsung Electronics and Toshiba. Hard luck if you said Texas Instruments: this once mighty chip giant is now in fourth place with sales worth $11.8bn, according to Gartner's latest list of The Top 10 Worldwide Semiconductor Vendors by Revenue Estimates.
Intel is top by a wide margin, with sales increasing by 10.7% to $33.8bn. Toshiba ($11.8bn) has just jumped into third place with 20.8% growth. It benefited from increased sales of the Sony PlayStation 3.
AMD is now in ninth place, according to Gartner. AMD's sales slumped by 20.9% to $5.9bn. giving it a market share of 2.1%.
Four of the top 10 saw revenues decline. Gartner says: "In terms of absolute revenue shifts, the largest drop was in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) which saw a decline of $2.4bn in revenue caused by sharp price declines as a result of oversupply."
But like PCs and software, it's a diverse market. "Others" (outside the top 10) shift $147bn worth of chips, for a 53.8% market share.
