Intel retained its leadership in terms of revenue
According to a report from IT research firm Gartner worldwide semiconductor revenue grew 1.8% to $306.8bn in 2011, compared to $301.4bn in 2010.
The top 25 semiconductor vendors accounted for a larger portion of the industry's total revenue - 69.2% in 2011 - compared with 68.3% in 2010, and grew faster than the industry as a whole.
IDC, however, said about half of this growth was the result of mergers and acquisitions.
Gartner principal research analyst Peter Middleton said of the major device segments, microcomponents performed best in 2011 after a relative underperformance in 2010.
"Within microcomponents, the subcategory that really drove this performance was compute microprocessors, which grew 14.2% year-over-year as a result of strong average selling prices (ASPs). This was driven both by servers and PCs, with the PC microprocessor market strongly benefiting from graphics integration," Middleton said.
Intel was the leader in terms of market share with 16.5% share and a revenue gain of 20.7%, followed by Samsung which was unable to close the gap with Intel because of DRAM weakness in 2011, the research firm said.
The third- and fourth-place rankings were occupied by Toshiba and Texas Instruments, respectively, while Renesas Electronics moved into the top five in 2011.
