Top 10 semiconductor companies see Q1 growth 

The world’s top ten semiconductor companies saw their revenues grow in the first quarter of 2020 from the previous quarter, research firm Omdia said.

This is despite the COVID-19 pandemic as the virus actually helped these firm from increase in PC and server sales.

From first place to tenth place, the ten companies are: Intel, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, HiSilicon, Nvidia and Kioxia 

The companies together marked US$63.6 billion in sales in the first quarter. This is a rise of 2.1% from the previous quarter.

Qualcomm and HiSilicon showed the highest growth during the quarter. 

Qualcomm saw its sales jump 14.6% in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. The US chip giant’s revenue jump came from China’s push in 5G, Omdia said.

HiSilicon saw a growth of 40.3%. Despite the restrictions placed on Huawei by the US government, the company has managed to protect itself from the effects of the US-China trade war. The company is doing this by building up sufficient inventory to ride out the impact of the revised US trade restrictions, which are planned to go into effect in September, Omdia said.

High demand for NAND flash memory from 5G also helped firms: Kioxia, formerly called Toshiba Memory, saw 10% growth rom the previous quarter.

Samsung posted US$13.751 billion in sales and SK Hynix US$5.869 billion, a rise of 1.4% and 0.7%, from the previous quarter, Omdia said. These companies were also helped by demand for NAND flash memory, especially those for enterprise solid-state drives (SSD).

However, the total semiconductor market was worth US$110.1 billion in the first quarter, a 2% decline in revenue from the previous quarter. Other firms besides the top ten companies saw a 7.2% drop in their sales.