Intel, Samsung and TSMC were the largest semiconductor manufacturers of 2012

IC Insights will soon present an April update to its 2013 McClean Report revealing the world's top 50 semiconductor manufacturers. The US-based semiconductor market research company published an excerpt of its analysis and forecast of the integrated circuit industry, presenting the performance of the current top 25 semiconductor manufacturers.

Intel, Samsung and TSMC make up the top three on the list, followed by Qualcomm and Texas Instruments (TI). Qualcomm, GlobalFoundries and TSMC comprise the top 3 companies ranked by growth. However compared to 2011, overall global semiconductor sales of the top 25 companies declined by 1%. Intel also registered a sales decline of 1% last year, AMD a 17% decline while Nvidia bucked the trend with a 7% increase. Qualcomm stole the show with an astounding 34% year-over-year sales increase.

A newcomer in the top 25 is Taiwan’s fabless communications chip specialist MediaTek, which rose from 26th (in 2011) to 21st in 2012. MediaTek is Taiwan's largest non-foundry semiconductor manufacturer. Meanwhile Japan’s Sharp surprisingly increased its rank by five positions ending up 22^nd place, despite the company’s recent economic struggles.

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