Global semiconductor revenue grew 7.9% in 2014

The global semiconductor revenue totaled $339.8 billion in 2014, a 7.9-per cent rise from 2013 revenue of $315 billion, while the top 25 vendors' combined revenue rose 11.7 per cent.

The top 25 vendors accounted for 72.1 per cent of total market revenue, up from 69.7 per cent in 2013, according to a statement by Gartner.

"As a group, DRAM vendors outperformed the rest of the semiconductor industry. This follows the trend seen in 2013 due to a booming DRAM market that saw revenue increase 31.7 per cent during 2014 as the undersupply and stable pricing continued," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner.

DRAM or Dynamic Random-Access Memory is a type of random-access memory that stores each bit of data in a separate capacitor within an integrated circuit.

"In contrast to 2013, which saw revenue decline in key device categories, including ASIC, discretes and micro components, all device categories saw positive growth in 2014, but none could match the growth of the memory market, which grew 16.9 per cent in 2014. Excluding memory revenue, growth for the remainder of the market reached 5.4 per cent, but this is much better than 2013 growth of 0.8 per cent for non-memory revenue,'' Norwood added.

Intel saw a return to growth in 2014, following two years of revenue decline, with 4.6 per cent growth. The company reorganised itself into five new business units in 2014, with the Datacenter Group continuing to be the most the stable unit for the company.

Intel is on pace to reach its goal of 40 million tablet processors in 2014, although these processors are being shipped at significantly discounted prices with incentives. On the PC front, Intel continued to gain market share from AMD, and Gartner expects volume increases for both Intel's notebook and desktop platforms compared with 2013. Intel has maintained the number one market share position for the 23rd consecutive year, capturing 15.0 per cent of the 2014 semiconductor market, down slightly from its peak of 16.5 per cent in 2011.

"In 2014, we saw a return to production growth in the traditional PC sector, after a 10.1 per cent decline in 2013," said Norwood. "The smartphone market continued to perform well, with production growth of around 34 per cent, down slightly from 39.5 per cent in 2013, although there was a distinct shift to utility and basic smartphones away from premium handsets. Tablet production, however, experienced a sharp slowdown from last year."

"DRAM revenues will hit $46.0 billion in 2014, an all-time high surpassing the previous record set back in 1995," said Norwood.

"However, in terms of the overall share of the semiconductor market, DRAM accounted for 13.5 per cent in 2014, half of the 27.9 per cent share it held back in 1995."

SK Hynix and Micron Technology benefited the most from the strong memory market, with the strongest growth of the top 10 vendors. SK Hynix saw a second strong year of revenue growth propelled by the booming DRAM market. DRAM accounts for about 80 per cent of the company's revenue.

Micron Technology moved up one place in the rankings in 2014 due to its 41 per cent growth. Its acquisition of Elpida Memory in 2013 helped make it one of the fastest-growth semiconductor vendors in the top 25.

Micron's DRAM business slightly underperformed the overall DRAM market as the company converted Fab 7 (formerly Tech Semiconductor) from DRAM to NAND in order to rebalance the portfolio following the Elpida acquisition.

This conversion improved the overall DRAM supply-and-demand balance, although it resulted in slower bit growth year over year. In 2014, DRAM accounted for just under 70 per cent of Micron's revenue, and NAND flash accounted for slightly under 30 per cent.