"For the electronics and semiconductor industries, 2008 started on a positive note but ended with a whimper as the global recession limited demand," said Alfonso Velosa, research director at Gartner. "Despite this, given the overall unit shipment growth of most of the leading OEMs in 2008, the semiconductor consumption threshold to be in the top ten was raised to $6.0 billion, $0.1 billion more than in 2007."
HP remained the leading OEM for semiconductor consumption. It accounted for $16.5 billion in 2008 - a flat result compared with 2007. Despite a significant increase in unit shipments, this highlights the market's changing product mix and the decline in semiconductor ASPs. As the top PC maker, HP was the leading consumer of microprocessors and memory semiconductors.
"HP and Nokia showed that manufacturers benefited from a significant decline in average selling prices," Mr Velosa said. "In addition, Nokia continued to shift its semiconductor-sourcing strategy away from designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for its handsets to using off-the-shelf application-specific standard products (ASSPs). Since Nokia is the world's largest vendor of mobile phones, this shift will continue to have a major impact on the semiconductor market."
"Apple again demonstrated how innovative use of technology and a keen understanding of consumer requirements can lead to strong growth in revenue and thus in semiconductor consumption," Mr Velosa said. "It jumped up to the number-six position, with $7 billion in semiconductor consumption for its branded products, driven by the strength of Apple's mobile phones, computers and portable media players (PMPs). Its integration of sensors and focus on industrial design and the 'user experience' set an example that few OEMs have been able to emulate."
Additional information is available in the Gartner report "Semiconductor Consumption by Top 10 OEMs, Worldwide, 2008 (Preliminary)." This report provides preliminary rankings for the top ten companies worldwide. The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/.... Later this year, Gartner Dataquest will publish an analysis of the top 50 OEM semiconductor consumers by application for 2008. This report will contain an in-depth analysis of the major hardware category's semiconductor supply chain, including analysis of semiconductor consumption by device category by OEM for hardware areas such as personal computers, cell phones, and more.
This research is produced by Gartner's Semiconductors Worldwide group. This research group combines memory, microcomponents, logic, ASIC, analogue, discrete device, RF and optical segments into a complete industry picture. Products, suppliers, start-ups, technologies, regional consumption, applications and emerging technologies are all covered in this broad program. To subscribe to this service, please contact Becky Tonnesen at +1 408 468 8287 or at becky.tonnesen@gartner.com.