Samsung Electronics and Apple remained the top semiconductor buyers in 2014, representing a combined semiconductor demand of 17%, according to Gartner. Samsung and Apple together consumed US$57.9 billion of semiconductors in 2014, an increase of US$3.9 billion from 2013.

"Samsung Electronics and Apple have topped the semiconductor consumption table for four consecutive years and their decisions have considerable technology and pricing implications for the whole semiconductor industry," said Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner. "However, while Samsung kept its position as the No. 1 largest customer of semiconductor chip vendors, its growth rate in 2014 was lower than the global semiconductor market's growth, firstly because it struggled in the smartphone market, and secondly because it is withdrawing from some parts of the PC market."

The top-10 companies bought US$125.6 billion of semiconductors, to account for 37% of semiconductor chip vendors' worldwide revenues in 2014, Gartner said. This was up from US$114.8 billion, accounting for 36.4% in 2013. The top-10 outperformed the semiconductor buying market and grew by 9.4% overall.

As a result of the stabilization of memory prices from 2013, eight companies among the top-10 increased their semiconductor demand in 2014, Gartner indicated. All of the top-10 companies in the design total available market (TAM) ranking for 2013 remained in the top 10 in 2014, although a number exchanged places.

Through mergers and acquisitions, fourth-place Lenovo significantly increased its semiconductor demand in 2014 with growth of 33.9%, Gartner noted. With growth of 21.6%, Huawei climbed to No. 7 in 2014, up from No. 9 in 2013, while LG Electronics climbed to No. 9 in 2014, up from No. 10 in 2013, with growth of 15.9%.

"The competitive landscape of the electronic equipment manufacturers and the semiconductor demand map were stable in 2014, but the slowdown in Samsung Electronics' design TAM can be considered a big trend change," said Yamaji. "Samsung and Apple remained the top two, but their combined growth underperformed the total semiconductor market growth in 2014. The impact from these two giants is still huge, but it is becoming weaker while China-based electronic equipment manufacturers, such as Lenovo and Huawei, significantly increased their importance as semiconductor chip buyers in 2014."

The cycle of an inflated boom and the obsolescence of electronic equipment are becoming faster, and it is also much more difficult for leading companies to maintain their position for a long time.

"It is inevitable that price competition between smartphone and media tablet vendors will become fiercer in the coming years, as hardware differentiation has been difficult to achieve. The pace of commoditization is accelerating, which leads to China's electronic equipment manufacturers growing fast," said Yamaji.