April 12, 2012 -- The top 25 fabless IC suppliers captured 80% of a total $64.9 billion fabless IC market in 2011, according to IC Insights. Sales topped $1 billion at 12 fabless companies; Qualcomm topped the list with nearly $10 billion in sales. US-based suppliers captured 8 of the top 10 rankings.

Worldwide fabless IC sales grew 4%, outpacing total IC market growth (1%), after an anomaly year in 2010 (total IC market growth was 33% vs 27% for fabless). Overall, 15 of the top 25 fabless IC companies outperformed the total 2011 fabless IC sales growth rate of 4%. Double-digit sales increases were seen at 8 fabless companies.

Table 1. Top 25 fabless IC companies ($M). SOURCE: IC Insights

China-based Spreadtrum was the star performer among the fabless IC producers last year, logging an amazing 95% sales jump. Spreadtrum supplies baseband processors and highly integrated CMOS RF transceivers for wireless applications with over 90% of its sales to China-based customers. As was shown in Figure 1, Spreadtrum has risen from being ranked as the 67th largest fabless IC supplier in 2009 to 17th in 2011, a jump of 50 spots in only 2 years.

Spreadtrum and ST-Ericsson are both heavily involved in the cellphone marketplace. In contrast to Spreadtrum, ST-Ericsson’s IC sales dropped 28% in 2011 after declining by 9% in 2010. The difficult times at the company led to a restructuring in March of 2012 and it is rumored that this was a prelude to eventually putting the company up for sale.

Table 2. Top 25 fabless IC suppliers in 2011 by growth rate ($M). SOURCE: IC Insights.

The 8 top-25 fabless IC companies that registered double-digit growth in 2011 had combined sales of $20.1 billion, up 29% from their combined sales of $15.6 billion in 2010. Overall, these top eight performers increased their combined sales by $4.5 billion last year as compared to a $2.4 billion increase for total fabless IC company sales in 2011. It is obvious that these eight companies are now prime targets for the IC foundries (e.g., TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, Samsung, etc.).

IC Insights’ April Update to The McClean Report (to be released later this month) is dedicated to IC company rankings and includes the top 50 semiconductor, IC, and fabless IC suppliers. Moreover, the top company rankings of MPU, MCU, foundry, flash memory, DRAM, analog, etc., suppliers will also be provided in the April Update.

A listing of the top 103 fabless IC suppliers in 2011 was included in IC Insights' March Update, which is part of the subscription to The McClean Report. Additional details of the 2012 IC market and its suppliers can be found in the 2012 edition of The McClean Report, IC Insights’ complete market analysis and forecast of the IC industry. IC Insights' Strategic Reviews database includes extensive profiles of more than 220 IC companies, including those companies with a fabrication facility as well as fabless IC suppliers. The profiles include financial highlights, company strategy, key personnel, products and services offered, process technologies employed, important strategic alliances, detailed fab data when applicable, and contact information.

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