Qualcomm, Texas Instruments Boost 2Q Wireless Chip SalesQualcomm, Texas Instruments Boost 2Q Wireless Chip Sales

Qualcomm and Texas Instruments in the second quarter outdid others in the wireless semiconductor market by increasing their share of global sales, according to a report this week by research firm iSuppli.

Qualcomm was the market leader in the second quarter with wireless semiconductor revenue of $1.37 billion, up 8.6% from $1.26 billion in the first quarter. Texas Instruments held the No. 2 spot, having sold $1.23 billion worth of wireless semiconductors, which is a 7% increase from $1.15 billion in the first quarter, iSuppli said in its report.

The revenue comes from sales of application-specific semiconductors for wireless applications. They include mobile handsets, wireless infrastructure equipment, wireless local area networks, and connectivity products.

The global wireless semiconductor market grew by 4% during the period. Both Qualcomm and Texas Instruments increased their market share. Qualcomm's share rose to 18.2% in the second quarter, up from 17.4% in the first quarter, while Texas Instruments' share rose to 16.4%, up from 15.9%.

"[Qualcomm] company, so far, is weathering its recent legal challenges to capitalize on strong growth in sales of chips for WCDMA mobile handsets and semiconductors for wireless infrastructure equipment," said Francis Sideco, an analyst at iSuppli, in a statement.

Earlier this month, the European Commission launched antitrust proceedings against Qualcomm after mobile phone manufacturers, including Nokia, Broadcom, NEC, Texas Instruments, Matsushita Electric Industrial, and Ericsson, complained that Qualcomm charged too much money for technology licenses.

NXP Semiconductors earned the third-largest market share of 5.8%, Freescale Semiconductor was No. 4 with 4.8%, and STMicroelectronics was No. 5 with 4.1%. The three companies had revenues ranging from about $400 million to $300 million in the second quarter. NXP showed the strongest growth among the top five wireless semiconductor suppliers due to strong sales of its mobile handset baseband chips.

ISuppli predicts the global wireless semiconductor revenue will increase by 4.5% in 2007, reaching $56.1 billion. The total revenue in 2006 was $53.7 billion.