Qualcomm climbs ranking of chip R&D spenders
Micron and Qualcomm showed the biggest increases in R&D spending and Broadcom showed the highest level of R&D spending as a proportion of sales at 30 percent.
Intel’s R&D spending was more than three times that of second-place Qualcomm, which made a 28 percent increase in R&D spending in 2013 and solidified the company’s position as the second-largest R&D spender. Samsung was ranked third. It’s annual R&D budget has remained relatively flat at $2.8 billion since 2011.
Samsung’s ability to hold down costs is partly due to its participation in IBM’s Common Platform Alliance for joint development of manufacturing processes, which also includes GlobalFoundries as an R&D partner.
Another factor is that Samsung’s primary business is making and selling DRAM and flash memory devices, which are capital-intensive, but not as R&D-intensive as the complex, high-performance logic-based products made by Intel and TSMC. Intel’s R&D spending reached a record-high $10.6 billion in 2013, but it was just 5% above 2012 spending.
Five of the top 10-ranked companies are based in the U.S., while two are in Japan, two in the Asia-Pacific region, and one in Europe. Two of the top 10 – Qualcomm and Broadcom – are fabless semiconductor companies.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
Foundries grow faster than IC market, says IC Insights
Former DRAM vendor climbs foundry ranking
CMOS image sensor market on 10% CAGR
Global chip market grew 5% in 2013, says IHS
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
