U.S. Companies Dominate Worldwide IC Marketshare

China and Taiwan companies register double-digit shares in the fabless segment but very low shares of the IDM IC segment.

June 18, 2019 -- IC Insights will release its 200+ page Mid-Year Update to the 2019 McClean Report next month. A portion of the Mid-Year Update will examine the trends for worldwide IC company marketshare by headquarters location.

Figure 1 shows the 2018 IDM and fabless company shares of IC sales as well as the total worldwide share of the IC market by company headquarters location.

Figure 1

The U.S. companies’ held just over 50% of the total worldwide IC market in 2018 followed by the South Korean companies with a 27% share, up three percentage points from 2017. The Taiwanese companies, on the strength of their fabless company IC sales, held the same 6% share of total IC sales as the European companies. Overall, the South Korean and Japanese companies have an extremely weak presence in the fabless IC segment and the Taiwanese and Chinese companies have a very low share of the IDM portion of the IC market. Overall, U.S.-headquartered companies show the most balance with regard to IDM, fabless, and total IC industry marketshare.

Driven by a surge in DRAM and NAND flash memory IC sales in 2018, the South Korean-headquartered companies, primarily Samsung and SK Hynix, registered a 26% sales increase, outpacing the Chinese companies by three percentage points last year. The South Korean and Chinese companies were the only regions/countries to grow faster than the total IC industry (14%) last year. However, with the memory market expected to show a huge 30% drop in 2019, it is likely that the South Korean companies will go from “first to worst” regarding IC sales growth by company headquarters location this year as compared to last year.

Report Details: The 2019 McClean Report

Additional details on IC market trends are provided in The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry. A subscription to The McClean Report includes free monthly updates from March through November (including a 200+ page Mid-Year Update), and free access to subscriber-only webinars throughout the year. An individual user license to the 2019 edition of The McClean Report is priced at $4,990 and includes an Internet access password. A multi-user worldwide corporate license is available for $7,990.