Samsung and Apple are top buyers of semiconductors in 2016, according to Gartner

Date: 02/02/2017
Market researcher Gartner has released its latest study on top buyers of semiconductor chips in the market. The second biggest semiconductor chip maker, Samsung is also the largest buyer of semiconductor chips. The second biggest buyer of semiconductor chips according to Gartner is Apple. Though Apple doesn't sell its own branded chips but designs lot of its SoC chips internally. Samsung buys 18.2 percent of the total worldwide semiconductor market.

"This is the sixth consecutive year that Samsung Electronics and Apple have topped the semiconductor consumption table," said Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner. "While both companies continue to exert considerable influence on technology and price trends for the wider semiconductor industry, their impact has lessened due to falling expectations for future growth."

The below table by Gartner provides preliminary Ranking of Top 10 Companies by Semiconductor Design TAM, Worldwide, 2016 (Millions of Dollars)

Top Semiconductor buyers


The new entry into this table is, a Chinese smart phone OEM called BBK Electronics which grew very fast in the year 2016. The three companies out of this list are from China indicating that China is the biggest buyer of semiconductor chips.

"Even though the influence on the semiconductor industry of the top two strongest OEMs is weakening, the combined design TAM of the top 10 companies outperformed the average growth rate of the total semiconductor market in 2016," said Mr. Yamaji. "However, semiconductor chip vendors can no longer secure their businesses by relying on a few strong customers because market share changes much faster these days. BBK Electronics grew very fast in 2016 and increased its design TAM, but this extraordinarily fast growth also underlines how volatile the businesses in China can be. Technology product marketing leaders at semiconductor chip vendors need to take the risks of their major customers into account, and always try to diversify their customer base."

Author: Srinivasa Reddy N
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