Apple Became World’s Top Chip Buyer in 2011
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012Apple became the world’s No. 1 buyer of semiconductors, for deployment in its consumer products during 2011, according to Gartner. The company spent $17.26 billion on semiconductors last year — up 34.5 percent from 2010, the firm’s analysts said Tuesday.
The major semiconductor vendor growth drivers in 2011 were smartphones, tablets and solid-state drives, according to Masatsune Yamaji, a principal research analyst at Gartner.
“Those companies that gained share in the smartphone market — such as Apple, Samsung Electronics and HTC — increased their semiconductor demand,” Yamaji said. “Media tablets were also a growth driver for the semiconductor market throughout 2011,” Yamaji added.
Apple’s global smartphone share rose significantly in 2011 and is expected to continue growing throughout the year ahead. Piper Jaffray’s survey work, for example, indicates that 94 percent of iPhone users plan to upgrade to a new iPhone.
To the investment firm’s analysts Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy, this suggests the iPhone 5, “which we are expecting in August with a new form factor, will be a monster upgrade.” Of the 550 people Piper Jaffray surveyed on iPhone 4S launch day, 73 percent were upgrading from an older iPhone, Murphy added Tuesday.
“Here’s the breakdown: 30 percent were upgrading from an iPhone 4, 25 percent were upgrading from an iPhone 3GS, 15 percent were upgrading from an iPhone 3G [and] 2 percent were upgrading from an original iPhone,” Murphy said in an e-mail.
About more than iPhone
Overall, the world’s top 10 semiconductor customers accounted for 35 percent of chip vendors’ revenue, equivalent to $105.6 billion. Though Samsung’s semiconductor purchases on a design total available market, or TAM, basis rose 9.2 percent to $16.68 billion last year, the company remained stuck in second place, and semiconductor purchases by Hewlett-Packard and Dell fell 5.5 percent to $16.18 billion and 6.7 percent to…
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