Eight leaders see sales drop

Six of the top 10 suppliers also underperformed the industry in 2008 – Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, Renesas, Sony and Hynix. Each of these experienced revenue declines of more than the 5.2% for the overall semiconductor market. Of these, Hynix posted the largest revenue decline of the top 25 companies – 33.4%. However, 10 of the top 25 grew their revenues: STMicroelectronics: Qualcomm; NEC Electronics; Broadcom; Panasonic; Sharp; Rohm; Marvell; MediaTek; and Fujitsu Microelectronics. Even so, the growth exhibited by ST, Broadcom, Rohm and MediaTek came through acquisition, rather than increased sales of existing products. Overall, the industry showed revenues of $258,304bn – 5.2% lower than 2007. Dale Ford, iSuppli’s senior vice president, market intelligence services, noted: “In iSuppli’s November estimate, Q4 semiconductor revenue was projected to decline by 8.8% compared to Q3. However, the final results show the market experienced a significant and broad based decline of 21.5% in Q4. The market decline in the fourth quarter impacted every semiconductor segment – without exception.”