(Nikkei BP Group)
(No.1 High-Tech News Site in Japanese)
|
|
| Top Semiconductor Makers See Sharp Revenue Drops in 1998
|
|
January 7, 1999 (BOSTON) -- The semiconductor industry's top manufacturers
struggled in 1998, with seven of the top 11 companies seeing their worldwide
revenue drop by at least 14 percent, according to Dataquest Inc.
|
"Semiconductor vendors around the world are glad to see the back of 1998,
a year slated to be the worst since the mid-eighties," said Joe D'Elia,
associate director and program manager for Dataquest's Semiconductors
Europe program. Dataquest of San Jose, Calif., is a unit of Gartner
Group Inc.
He added, "The DRAM market is sailing in uncharted waters, having suffered
its third bad year in a row. Over-capacity reared its head in previously
profitable product segments, and the ramifications of the Asian financial
crisis continued to be felt throughout the year."
Intel Corp. was one of the few vendors to post positive revenue in 1998,
with revenue surpassing US$22.6 billion (see Table 1). The differential
between Intel and No. 2 vendor NEC Corp. increased again, with Intel's
semiconductor revenue being 2.7 times that of its nearest rival. Philips
NV, STMicroelectronics NV and Siemens AG all increased their ranking,
so three European vendors made it into the worldwide top 10 vendor ranking
for the first time.
"In general, companies with DRAMs in their portfolio fared badly. However,
there are exceptions, with Siemens growing at more than 12 percent in
1998," said Kevin McClure, senior market research analyst in Dataquest's
worldwide research operations group.
"On a regional basis, Europe was the only region in the world where vendor
revenue gains outnumbered the declines," he added. "Seven of the top
10 vendors posted positive European revenue gains in 1998."
Table 1 Top 10 Worldwide Semiconductor Vendors by Revenue Estimates
(Millions of U.S. Dollars)
| 97 Rank |
98 Rank |
Company Name |
97 Revenue |
98 Revenue |
97-98 Growth (%) |
|
| 1 |
1 |
Intel |
21,746 |
22,675 |
4.3 |
| 2 |
2 |
NEC |
10,222 |
8,271 |
-19.1 |
| 3 |
3 |
Motorola |
8,067 |
6,918 |
-14.2 |
| 5 |
4 |
Toshiba |
7,253 |
6,055 |
-16.5 |
| 4 |
5 |
Texas Instruments |
7,352 |
6,000 |
-18.4 |
| 7 |
6 |
Samsung |
5,856 |
4,752 |
-18.9 |
| 6 |
7 |
Hitachi |
6,298 |
4,649 |
-26.2 |
| 9 |
8 |
Philips |
4,440 |
4,502 |
1.4 |
| 10 |
9 |
STMicroelectronics NV |
4,019 |
4,300 |
7.0 |
| 12 |
10 |
Siemens |
3,441 |
3,866 |
12.4 |
| 8 |
10 |
Fujitsu |
4,622 |
3,866 |
-16.4 |
Source: Dataquest (January 1999)
(Lori Valigra, Asia BizTech Correspondent)
<Visit News Center for more Asian news.>
|
|
|
