Large buyers of semiconductors in 2011

Published:2012/1/29 21:59:00 Author:Phyllis From:SeekIC

According to latest research from Gartner, Apple has become the largest buyer of semiconductors in the world, followed by Samsung. Compared with 2010, Apple’s spending has jumped 34.6% in 2011 with 17.3 billion dollars, or 5.7% of the total share of chip purchases on semiconductor’s purchases. Samsung spent 16.7 billion dollars, or 5.5% of all chip purchases. The third one was HP with 16.6 billion dollars spending. Last year, leading electronics manufacturers spent a total of 105.6 billion dollars, representing a year-over-year increase of 1.8 billion dollars. The major growth drivers in 2011 were smartphones, media tablets and solid-state drives.

Companies like Apple, Samsung Electronics and HTC gained their share in the smartphone market and increased their semiconductor demand, while companies that lost market share in this segment, such as Nokia and LG Electronics, decreased their semiconductor demand.

Gartner says Apple’s jump can be attributed to an overall increase industry spending on semiconductors for smartphones, tablets and solid-state drives. The company checked off all three of those with its products. It gained a much greater share of the smartphone market, and its media tablet business was also highly successful in 2011. While DRAM prices fell drastically in 2011, and many PC vendors decreased their total semiconductor demand accordingly, the success of the MacBook Air enabled Apple to increase semiconductor chip demand even in its PC business.

Lenovo was another big spender in 2011 with spending growing by 23.7%. Besides Samsung, it was one of the only PC vendors on the list to see growth, with HP, Dell and Sony decreasing spending.

One of the biggest declines was Nokia, which was estimated to reduce its purchases by about 20 percent in 2011. As a result, it dropped a spot to be the number five semiconductor buyer, ahead of Sony and Toshiba.

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