Worldwide semiconductor revenues reached US$306.8 billion in 2011, up US$5.4 billion, or 1.8% from 2010.

The top 25 semiconductor vendors' revenues appeared to grow faster, at 3.1%, than the industry as a whole and accounted for a larger portion of the industry's total revenues - 69.2% in 2011, compared with 68.3% in 2010. However, about half of this growth was the result of mergers and acquisitions.

"Of the major device segments, microcomponents performed best in 2011 after a relative underperformance in 2010," said Peter Middleton, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Within microcomponents, the subcategory that really drove this performance was compute microprocessors, which grew 14.2% year over year as a result of strong ASPs. This was driven both by servers and PCs, with the PC microprocessor market strongly benefiting from graphics integration."

Intel recorded a 20.7% revenue gain and held the No. 1 market share position for the 20th consecutive year. 2011 marked Intel's highest-ever market share at 16.5%, Gartner indicated. Its previous high was back in 1998, when it controlled 16.3% share.

Samsung, the No. 2 vendor, was held back by DRAM weakness in 2011, so it was unable to close the gap with Intel, Gartner said. Toshiba and Texas Instruments (TI) retained their third- and fourth-place rankings respectively, while Renesas Electronics moved into the top five during its first full year as a combined company.

Elsewhere in the top 10, sixth-placed Qualcomm's semiconductor business increased 39% in 2011 and nearly reached US$10 billion in revenues. Qualcomm continued to take share in the rapidly growing smartphone market, and it was one of the fastest-growing semiconductor companies in 2011, Gartner said. At No. 10, Broadcom had a solid year, outperforming the overall semiconductor market, with particular strength in the mobile and wireless division, which recorded another year of double-digit growth.

In addition, Gartner revealed in its Relative Industry Performance index that Qualcomm, Hynix and Infineon performed better than expected. The three vendors grew better than 10% beyond expectations on the Relative Industry Performance index. In contrast, disappointments in the Relative Industry Performance index include Panasonic, Elpida and MediaTek.

Gartner's Relative Industry Performance index measures the difference between industry-specific growth for a company and actual growth, showing which are transforming their businesses by growing share or moving into new markets and choosing their customers wisely.