Looking back on data of the annual top 20 semiconductor companies since 1987, it’s amazing how much has changed. In my last post I looked at all the companies that went bankrupt, spun-out, or merged their way into or out of the top 20 list. Change is definitely a constant in this field. Now, let’s look at the makeup of the 2010 list of top semiconductor companies. Here is the list, as generated by iSuppli.

1 Intel Corporation
2 Samsung Electronics
3 Toshiba Semiconductor
4 Texas Instruments
5 Renesas Electronics
6 Hynix
7 STMicroelectronics
8 Micron Technology
9 Qualcomm
10 Broadcom
11 Elpida Memory
12 Advanced Micro Devices
13 Infineon Technologies
14 Sony
15 Panasonic Corporation
16 Freescale Semiconductor
17 NXP
18 Marvell Technology Group
19 MediaTek
20 NVIDIA

It’s important to note that foundries are excluded from this accounting – their revenue is attributed to the companies placing the orders. Thus, this is a semiconductor product-based top-20 list, not a semiconductor maker-based top-20 list.

And that distinction is obvious when looking at the make-up of the 2010 top-20. Six of the top 20 companies are fabless. Another seven are “fab-lite”, meaning they have stopped investing in new fabs or leading-edge manufacturing. That leaves just seven leading-edge semiconductor manufacturers in the top 20. Of those, four make mostly memory (80% of Samsung’s revenue came from memory), two make mostly logic, and one (Toshiba) makes a fair amount of both.

As a point of reference, if TSMC’s revenue were attributed to TSMC rather than their customers, they would be in fourth place, just barely behind Toshiba. The next two largest foundries, UMC and GlobalFoundries, would find themselves near the bottom of the top 20.

So, we have seven semiconductor manufacturers and three foundries that claim to still want to invest in leading-edge manufacturing capacity. That’s a far cry from just 10 years ago, when all 20 of the top 20 semiconductor companies were committed to building new leading-edge fabs. And even this list of 10 companies can’t really afford to play at the bleeding edge. Only five of them (Intel, Samsung, Toshiba, TSMC, and Hynix) have over $10B/year in semiconductor revenue, probably the minimum needed to build that next $5B mega fab. Add EUV and 450mm wafers into the mix, and you can see that there will be very few players at this ultra-high end of manufacturing.

It is conventional wisdom that the last decade has been one of extreme consolidation in the semiconductor business. Next post, I’ll look at the numbers to see how well that conventional wisdom holds up.

Chris Mack, www.lithoguru.com

As part of my fascination with the history of the semiconductor industry, I’ve recently been reviewing data on the annual top 20 semiconductor companies since 1987. Using revenue data compiled by Gartner Dataquest (through 1999) and iSupply (2000 – 2010), it’s been very interesting to see what changes have come about at the top of the heap in our industry. Here is a brief synopsis of some major events in the lives of the top-20 semiconductor companies since 1987:

• SGS-THOMSON was formed with the merger of SGS Microelettronica and Thomson Semiconducteurs in 1987, and changed its name to STMicroelectronics in 1998.
• Harris Semiconductor was formed in 1988 when Harris bought GE’s Solid State division, and was spun out by Harris as Intersil in 1999. GE was a top-20 semiconductor company in 1987, and Harris last saw the top 20 in 1990.
• Matsushita changed its business name to Panasonic in 2008, which bought Sanyo in 2009. Sanyo was last in the top 20 in 1999.
• The memory businesses of NEC and Hitachi were combined and spun out as Elpida Memory in 1999, which then took over the Mitsubishi memory business in 2003.
• The logic business of Hitachi and Mitsubishi were combined to form Renesas Technology in 2003, taking Hitachi and Mitsubishi completely out of the semiconductor business. Renasas then took over the semiconductor business of NEC in 2010 and is now Renesas Electronics. NEC was the #1 semiconductor maker in 1987 – 1991, and has been in the top 20 every year until 2010.
• Hyundai merged with LG Semiconductor in 1999, and changed its semiconductor business name to Hynix Semiconductor in 2001. LG was last listed in the top 20 in 1997. Hyundai first joined the top 20 in 1995.
• Motorola spun out its semiconductor business as Freescale Semiconductor in 2004.
• Philips spun out its semiconductor business as NXP Semiconductors in 2006.
• Siemens spun out its semiconductor business as Infineon Technologies in 1999, which spun out its memory business as Qimonda in 2006, which went bankrupt in 2009. Qimonda was ranked #16 in 2006.
• AMD spun out its Fujitsu joint venture Flash memory business (started in 1993) as Spansion in 2005, and the rest of its semiconductor business as GlobalFoundries in 2009, which merged with Chartered Semiconductor in 2010. Spansion made it as high as 24 in the semiconductor rankings in 2006.
• AT&T spun out its semiconductor business as Lucent Technologies in 1996, which spun out its semiconductor business as Agere Systems in 2000, which was bought by fabless LSI Logic in 2007 (now LSI Corporation). Agere was last in the top 20 in 2001.
• OKI Electric Industry dropped out of the top 20 after 1993, and sold its semiconductor business to Rohm in 2008. Rohm was last in the top 20 in 2008.
• Other companies to drop out of the top 20 were Sharp (last listed in 2009), Analog Devices (2004), Fujitsu (2004), IBM (2005),
• National Semiconductor bought Fairchild Semiconductor in 1987 and spun it out again in 1997, It bought Cyrix in 1997 and sold it 1999. National was last in the top 20 in 1998, and was bought by Texas Instruments in 2011.

And those are just some of the changes in the top 20 over the last 25 years. It’s always a wild ride in the semiconductor business.

Next post, I’ll look at the current make-up of the 2010 semiconductor top-20 list and see what has changed in the last 25 years.

Chris Mack, www.lithoguru.com