AMD breaks into top 20 chip vendor ranking

Article By : Peter Clarke

The top-20 ranking of semiconductor companies by sales in 1H16 shows that MediaTek and AMD both had good second quarters compared with the first.

MediaTek and AMD has shown good form in the second quarter of 2016, according to IC Insights.

IC Insights includes foundries in the top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking since it has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not a market-share ranking, and realises that in some cases the semiconductor sales are double counted. The top-20 ranking includes three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC) and six fabless companies.

__Figure 1:__ *Top 20 semiconductor vendors ranked by 1H16 sales revenue. (Source: IC Insights)*

There was one new entrant into the top-20 ranking in 1H16 as compared to the 2015 ranking–AMD, which replaced Japan-based Sharp. In 2Q16, AMD registered a 23% increase in sales while Sharp logged a 13% decline in its 2Q16/1Q16 revenue.

Intel increased its control at the top of the ranking in the 1H16 increasing its lead in percentage terms over Samsung from 20% in 2015 to 33% in1H16.

IC Insights includes Apple in the ranking even though it only designs processors for use in its own system products. IC Insights estimates that Apple’s custom ARM-based SoC processors had a sales value of $2.9 billion in 1H16, which placed them in the 14th position in the top-20 ranking and moved the up three positions compared with 2015.

MediaTek’s application processor shipments to fast-growing China-based smartphone suppliers such as Oppo and Vivo, helped drive a 32% sales increase in 2Q16 over 1Q16. Overall, IC Insights expects MediaTek to register about $8.8 billion in sales in 2016, which would represent a 31% surge over the $6.7 billion in sales the company had last year.