Semiconductor sales leaders by year

This article lists the top 20 largest semiconductor companies by sales leaders over the past 20 years.

The article distinguishes between three types of semiconductor companies:
# Chip makers such as Intel and AMD that design, manufacture and sell their chips, which are designated as Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDM)
# Fabless manufacturers such as NVIDIA and Xilinx that design and sell chips but outsource manufacturing to foundry companies.
# Foundry companies (such as TSMC and UMC) that manufacture chips designed and sold by their customers.

Only corporate semiconductor revenues are taken into account and businesses activities outside this sphere are excluded, for example IBM non-semiconductor business lines are excluded.

[http://www.gartner.com Gartner Dataquest Corp.] has the longest history as the reference publisher of this ranking and offers independent syndicated research. Alternative sources of semiconductor sales market share have also become available. In the majority of cases, rankings are based on the analysis of the financial reports of the chip makers, although definitional issues regarding chip types, multichip modules, foundry manufacturing and chip license revenues create differences in reported numbers.The ranking for a given year is published in March of the following year when all the financial reports of the companies are closed. Many electronics press magazines report the information (like [http://www.eetimes.com eetimes] ). This article has been written with the help of these publications.

Forecast Ranking for year 2007

[http://www.isuppli.com/marketwatch/default.asp?id=423 iSuppli Corporation supplied forecast rankings for 2007]

(foundries excluded)

Notes :
*(1) : In December 2005, AMD divested itself of its Flash Memory business, choosing solely to focus on its microprocessor and logic businesses. This change led to predictions that AMD's market share and spot in these rankings would drop precipitously. However, in June of 2006 AMD announced its intent to purchase ATI Technologies. The buyout of ATI Technologies closed in October 2006, and the additional revenues from the purchase of ATI make up the majority of AMD's revenue and market share gains (in the terms of this list)
*(2) : In 2006, the semiconductor operations of the parent company, Philips were sold to a consortium of private equity firms through an LBO to form a new separate legal entity named NXP Semiconductors.
*(3) : In 2006, Freescale (formerly known as Motorola semiconductors) agreed to be acquired by a consortium of private equity firms through an LBO —said to be the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company in history—.
*(4) : In 2006, the memory activities (essentially DRAM) of the parent company, Infineon were spun off to form a new separate legal entity named Qimonda. The comparison between year 2006 and 2005 takes into account this split. Qimonda becomes the world's fourth largest DRAM manufacturer.

Ranking for year 2005

Source : [http://www.isuppli.com iSuppli] (foundries excluded)

Ranking for year 2004

Source [http://www.isuppli.com iSuppli] (foundries excluded)

Ranking for year 2002

Source [http://www.isuppli.com iSuppli] (foundries excluded)

Notes :
*(1) : The foundry activities of IBM are excluded from this revenue.
*(2) : In 2000, the semiconductor operations of parent company, Lucent Technologies were spun off to form a new separate legal entity named Agere.

Ranking for year 1999