Gartner releases final 2006 chip vendor rankings

Intel Corp. remained far and away the No. 1 chip vendor in 2006, though Gartner noted that the company had a challenging year and saw revenue decline of 12 percent. Until the fourth quarter of 2006, Intel lost share with its processors in the server and consumer segments to rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Gartner (Stamford, Conn.) said.

Gartner noted that AMD achieved impressive gains in market share in 2006, including in the mobile, desktop and server product families at computer giant Dell Inc. An across-the-board price war between AMD and Intel eroded revenues for both companies, Gartner said, and impacted Intel the most.

Gartner noted that Intel turned things around in late 2006 with the introduction of the 65-nm Core 2 Duo and Xeon 5100 product families. With its new product offerings, Gartner said it expects Intel to recapture the losses it suffered last year in 2007.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. maintained the No. 2 ranking among chip suppliers in 2006, Gartner said, achieving increased sales in DRAM, NOR flash, PSRAM and CMOS image sensors during the year but enduring a decline in NAND flash revenue.

"Diverging trends in key markets contributed to moderate overall growth," said John Barber, research director at Gartner, in a statement. "Slowing growth rates in traditional markets such as PC processors were offset by strong gains in DRAM and wireless communications."

Gartner's final 2006 chip vendor rankings nearly mirror rankings released by fellow market analyst firm iSuppli Corp. in mid-March. iSuppli calculated slightly lower overall 2006 semiconductor revenue—$260.2 billion—and differed slightly on the top 10 vendors. For example, Gartner lumped Infineon Technologies AG and its memory chip spinout, Qimonda, together, while iSuppli broke them out separately.

 See Gartner's top 10 2006 chip vendors