Top 20by Claudia Sonea

IC Insights recently made a study of the semiconductor suppliers in the 1H07 ranking them on a scale from 1 to 20 according to the revenues. From last year Top 20 some movements have occurred, mostly below the first three (Intel, Samsung and TI). Qualcomm, the wireless giant company, has moved from the 17th in 2006 to 13th in 1H07 with 17 million dollars behind Infineon, the 12th runner up. Its revenues climbed 9 percent and Infineon's 6 percent. On the other side AMD, whose dark future is still in a thick mist, lost two positions and landed on the 15th, but still revenues increased 12 percent after 1H07, perhaps the new changes and deals will help the company to recover. IC Insights forecast that many semiconductor companies that lost their ranks might regain them, like in the case of TSMC that despite the highest increase of 17 percent dropped one spot. On the other hand some could never regain their original position, Freescale has dropped from the 9th place to the 16th in 1H07 and there is no hope for the sun to raise again due to the dependence on Motorola whose future is not yet stable because of the share loss in the handset market. Other companies advance slow but sure, Sony and NXC moved only one spot (from 10th to 9th and from 11th to 10th) The market is quite stable and there aren't any expectations for big changes to happen in the second half of 2007. IC Insights forecast a new orientation towards the DRAM and flash memory markets. Anyway , if you want to invest in a company or buy some shares than you should look carefully to the annual revenue of each semiconductor company and my advice would be to go with Intel because it is the best after all. Have a good fluctuation on shares!

related story: http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/3197/2/

by Claudia Sonea for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models