The production value of Taiwan's IC design industry totaled NT$119.52 billion (US$3.96 billion) in the first quarter of 2014, down 4% sequentially but up 19.7% from a year earlier, according to Digitimes Research.
The production value trended up month on month throughout the the first quarter of 2014 and surged over 15% sequentially to hit a 15-month high of NT$44.29 billion in March, which indicates the industry has been able to keep its growth momentum, said Digitimes Research.
By product category, consumer IC vendors were most affected by seasonality in the first quarter with their combined sales suffering a setback of 13.3% as compared to the previous quarter.
Analog IC suppliers managed to ramp up their sales by 0.5% sequentially in the first quarter, while vendors of niche memory chips and IC design service houses saw their sales drop at a rate below the industry's 4% decline.
Strong growth posted by the leading IC design houses, including those supplying analog ICs, niche memory chips and handset solutions, helped the industry curtail the adverse impacts of off-peak season effects.
Consequently, the ratio of the production value of the top-10 IC design houses to the industry's total value climbed to 70.1% in the first quarter of 2014 compared to 64.9% a year earlier, indicating a continual concentration of Taiwan's IC design industry, Digitimes Research has found.
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