The battle between the two smartphone giants, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), can also be seen in the semiconductor market, with both the rivals dominating consumption, according to analysts at Gartner.
Since there could be only one winner, Samsung bagged the number one spot.
The total consumption of both handset makers was $45.3 billion of semiconductors in 2012, which is $7.9 billion more than last year. Together the consumption accounted 15 percent of the total cost of semiconductors.
Masatsune Yamaji, analyst at Gartner, Inc. (NYSE:IT) said: “Although Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94) (KRX:005930) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) continue to go from strength to strength, other leading electronic equipment makers fared less well, and six of the top 10 reduced their demand in 2012.”
“In addition to a weak macroeconomic situation, a dramatic change in consumer demand contributed to a reduction in semiconductor demand in 2012. The PC market still represented the largest sector for chip demand, but desktop and mobile PCs did not sell well, as consumers’ interest shifted to new mobile computing devices such as smartphones and media tablets,” he added and said “This shift caused a substantial decrease in semiconductor demand in 2012, as the semiconductor content of a smartphone or a media tablet is far less than that of a PC.”
The consumption of top 10 companies was $106.4 billion, accounting 36 percent of total revenue, which amounted to $297.6 billion. Samsung accounted for 8 percent of the chip market while Apple stood at 7.2 percent. The next in line was Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) with 4.7 percent of the market share, followed by Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) (2.9 percent) and Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE) (2.7 percent). Other companies in the top 10 are Lenovo Group Limited (ADR) (PINK:LNVGY), Toshiba Corp (TYO:6502), LG, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V). Among all the top 10 companies, Nokia’s demand for semiconductors declined the most.
Yamaji added: “While the growth of new mobile computing devices, notably smartphones and media tablets, has not fully compensated for the drop in the semiconductor demand from the PC market, the datacenter and communications infrastructure market will keep driving semiconductor demand.”
“The limited computing and storage resources of new mobile computing devices will be compensated for by cloud computing services with light application software.”
