Intel holds leadership for the 18th consecutive year

According to an information technology research and advisory company Gartner’s announcement , Intel holds its position as the world's largest chip producer by revenue for the eighteenth consecutive year in 2009. Despite an overall decline in the global chip market, Intel remains atop.

Intel's share of the chip market reached 14.6% last year, up from 13.6% in 2008 due to strong PC sales, Gartner said in its Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.

The global chip market lost 10.5% last year overall to $228.4 billion, that is down $28.6 billion from a year earlier, amid a global recession that saw several companies file for bankruptcy. It was the second straight yearly decline ever for the chip industry, Gartner said.

According to the market research company report, South Korea's memory chip giants, Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor , were the only two companies to post revenue growth in 2009, after the memory chip industry rebounded. Everyone else showed steep decline. 

Samsung Electronics maintained its second place rank globally with $17.7 billion in revenue, up from $17.4 billion a year earlier. The world's largest memory chip maker grabbed a 7.7% global chip market share and its revenue was a little over half of Intel's $33.3 billion last year.

Hynix Semiconductor saw revenue rise to $6.04 billion from $6.01 billion and it moved to seventh place from ninth in global chip rankings, with a 2.6% share of the market.

Actually, two South Korea's companies benefited from a rise in DRAM and NAND flash memory chip prices after the market bottomed in 2008, as Gartner said.

The top five chip makers as of Gartner's ranking remained the same as last year, Intel, Samsung, Toshiba, Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics, while Qualcomm jumped to sixth place in 2009 from eighth a year earlier.