News March 31, 19:07 Eastern Time
SAN JOSE, CALIF. (March 31) BUSINESS WIRE -March 31, 1999--The worldwide semiconductor market suffered its biggest decline since 1985, as 1998 semiconductor revenue reached $134.8 billion, a decline of 8.4 percent from 1997, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner Group Inc. (NYSE: IT).
In 1985, the market declined by more than 15 percent. In 1998, the DRAM segment suffered the steepest decline, with revenue dropping 29.5 percent from 1997.
"The overcapacity in DRAM spread to other product categories and dragged most ASPs down," said Mary Olsson, director and principal analyst for Dataquest's Semiconductors Worldwide program. "Demand for products remained strong throughout the year, and in most product categories, unit shipments continued to increase. It's these continuous unit increases that the industry hopes will fill capacity this year and enable it to get back to revenue growth."
Intel continued to put distance between itself and its nearest rival, and now it's 2.8 times as big as No. 2 vendor NEC (see Table 1). Siemens experienced the strongest growth among the top-tier vendors, as it grew 9.2 percent in 1998.
Table 1
Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Estimates for 1998
(Millions of U.S. Dollars)
1997 1997 Market 1998 1998 Market 1997-1998
Company Revenue Share (%) Revenue Share (%) Growth (%)
Intel 21,746 14.7 22,784 16.9 4.8
NEC 10,222 6.9 8,135 6.0 -20.4
Motorola 8,067 5.5 7,086 5.3 -12.2
Toshiba 7,253 4.9 5,869 4.4 -19.1
Texas Instruments 7,352 5.0 5,820 4.3 -20.8
Hitachi 6,298 4.3 4,620 3.4 -26.6
Samsung 5,856 4.0 4,595 3.4 -21.5
Philips 4,440 3.0 4,445 3.3 0.1
STMicroelectronics
N.V. 4,019 2.7 4,197 3.1 4.4
Fujitsu 4,622 3.1 3,826 2.8 -17.2
Siemens 3,441 2.3 3,757 2.8 9.2
Others 63,848 43.4 59,643 44.2 -6.6
Total Market 147,164 100.0 134,777 100.0 -8.4
Source: Dataquest (March 1999)
"At the major product category level, the biggest decline (-23.0 percent) was in the memories market, which was fueled by the DRAM segment," said Kevin McClure, senior market research analyst in Dataquest's worldwide Research Operations group. "Within the microcomponents market, the microprocessors segment grew 7.7 percent, primarily driven by the late upturn in worldwide PC shipments."
The other growth area was in digital signal processors with 5.4 percent growth, an increase that was due to the continuous increase in the rollout of digital mobile phones and cellular infrastructure, plus the boom in remote access device deployment by Internet service providers.
Additional information on this market is available in the Dataquest Alert "1998 Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Drops to $134.8 Billion!" This report provides final 1998 semiconductor rankings worldwide, as well as worldwide semiconductor revenue by product segment.
This report is produced by Dataquest's Semiconductors Worldwide program. This program combines memory, microcomponent, logic, ASIC, analog, discrete device, RF, and optical segments into a complete industry picture. Additional information on this program is available on Dataquest's Web site dataquest.com
To purchase the report or subscribe to this program, please call 800/419-DATA, or 408/468-8009. More information about Dataquest's programs, descriptions of recent research reports, and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at dataquest.com.
GartnerGroup's Dataquest is the recognized leader in providing the high-technology and financial communities with market intelligence for the semiconductor, computer systems and peripherals, communications, document management, software, and services sectors of the global information technology industry. |
