Apple And Samsung Top Semiconductor Customers Again In 2015

The top semiconductor buyers of 2015 where once again Apple and Samsung Electronics. According to Gartner, the leading information technology, marketing research and advisory firm in America, Apple and Samsung accounted for 17.7% of the market. Together the two consumed a total of 59 billion dollars of semiconductors for the 2015 year, which is an increase of .8 billion dollars from the previous 2014 year. This will make the fifth consecutive year that Apple and Samsung Electronics have been seen at the top of the semiconductor consumption list. Samsung however, has seen a lower TAM or total available market in its design growth compared to its total semiconductor market from 2014 to 2015.

Revenue generated from semiconductor chip vendors is at risk from major revenue declines as was seen in 2015. 123 billion dollars of semiconductors were bought by the top ten companies. This accounts for 36.9% of the worldwide revenue of semiconductor chip vendors in 2015, which is a decrease from the 37.9% accounted for in 2014.

This revenue decline is contributed to from a number of factors most notable is HP decision to spin off its business enterprise. This move knocked top company Toshiba off of the top ten list. In 2015 Toshiba had 4.6 billion dollars in total available market design. If the same top ten companies from 2014 were taken into account, which would include Toshiba, HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise the 2015 semiconductor would have totaled 127.6 billion dollars. This would have accounted for 38.2%, an increase from 2014, of the worldwide revenue for semiconductor chip vendors.

Another contributor for the revenue decline for semiconductor chip vendors is that the expansion and growth of the personal electronic device market is starting to decrease or slow down. Instead of semiconductor chip vendors relying on the large customers bases like Apple, Samsung Electronics and Lenovo, they are diversifying their sales targets. This is become especially obvious with the general purpose chip vendors. In order for these semiconductor chip vendors to stabilize or balance their growth they are targeting the more fragmented long tail customers which are smaller when compared to Apple and Samsung customers. This decision allows these semiconductor vendors to maintain their business growth while also using a mass marketing strategy.

The 2015 top companies were identical to the 2014 list with the exception of Toshiba not being on it, so nine of the ten companies were repeat appearance. Of the nine repeat top ten companies seven of them saw a decrease in their semiconductor demand not just Samsung. This decrease could be starting a trend where large companies will find it difficult to hold onto their top position for extended periods of times. With a decrease in demand for electronic equipment as customers are finding much of it unnecessary the top ten list could see drastic changes in the future. The large companies that have held strong over the past five years to their top ten position may find it more challenging to make the list in the years to come.