1998: A Year Of Chip-Making Pain
(01/06/99, 1:15 p.m. ET)
By Margaret Quan, EE Times
1998 will go down in history as the worst year for semiconductor manufacturers since the mid-1980's, according to a preliminary 1998 ranking of chip vendors by Dataquest, in San Jose, Calif.
Seven of the world's top 11 chip vendors experienced revenue declines of at least 14 percent last year, according to estimates by Dataquest, a unit of Gartner Group.
The DRAM market suffered its third bad year in a row, overcapacity hit previously profitable market segments, and the Asian financial crisis also contributed to last year's poor showing, said Joseph D'Elia, associate director and program manager for Dataquest's Semiconductors Europe program.
Intel was one of the market's only major chip makers to post an increase in revenue in 1998, when its revenues topped $22.6 billion, Dataquest said. Intel's revenue more than doubled the revenue of NEC, its nearest competitor, which tallied worldwide revenue of $8.27 billion for 1998.
In general, DRAM manufacturers fared worse than other chip makers, Dataquest found. But Siemens bucked that trend and grew more than 12 percent, said Kevin McClure, senior market research analyst in Dataquest's worldwide research operations group.
Three European vendors -- Philips, STMicroelectronics, and Siemens -- were placed in Dataquest's top 10 ranking for the first time last year.
Europe was the only geographic region that saw revenue gains outnumber declines last year. Seven of Dataquest's Top 10 vendors posted increases in European revenue in 1998.
Ranked by semiconductor revenue, Dataquest said the world's top 10 semiconductor companies in 1998 were: Intel, NEC, Motorola, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Hitachi, Philips, STMicroelectronics, and (tied for the No. 10 spot) Siemens and Fujitsu.
Several vendors moved up from their 1997 rankings, including Toshiba, Samsung, Philips, STMicroelectronics, and Siemens. Vendors that moved down from Dataquest's 1997 rankings were Hitachi, Texas Instruments, and Fujitsu.
Total semiconductor revenue for Dataquest's top 10 vendors was $75.85 billion last year, down 8.95 percent from 1997's $83.316 billion revenues
|
