GlobalFoundries splashes into fab top ten

It's the chip shop hit parade

AMD fab spin-off GlobalFoundries Inc. has muscled its way into the top five foundries in a list just published by chip counters at IC Insights Inc.

The lising pre-dates GlobalFoundries acquisition of Chartered Semi towards the end of the year. Combined sales for the merged outfit would have been worth over $1.6 billion in 2009 the report suggests. ''The combined sales of Chartered and GlobalFoundries would have been just over $2.6 billion in 2009, enough to put the combined company's sales only eight per cent behind second-ranked UMC.''

Taiwan's TSMC tops the list. "TSMC's sales in 2009 were more than 3x that of UMC, which in turn had more than the combined foundry sales of Chartered and SMIC in 2009,'' the insightful ones reckon.

Another notable gain in terms of market share was posted by TowerJazz. Israel's Tower Semiconductor Ltd bought Jazz over a year ago and looks to have consolidated its business and can look forward to a decent 2010 the report reckons.

Of the top ten Samsung and IBM will have their work cut out this year, according to the Insights.

Here's the full list, with and the sales figures the results are based on

Who                              How much ($)

1. TSMC                  $8.989 billion

2. UMC                   $2.815 billion

3. Chartered           $1.540 billion

4. SMIC                  $1.075 billion

5. GlobalFoundries   $1.065 billion

6. Dongbu               $395 million

7. Vanguard            $382 million

8. IBM                    $335 million

9. Samsung             $325 million

10. Grace                $310 million

11. He Jian              $305 million

12. Tower                $292 million

13. HHNEC               $290 million

14. SSMC                $280 million

15. TI                     $250 million

16. X-Fab                $223 million

17. MagnaChip        $220 million

Source: IC Insights