IHS forecasts that following a 2.5 percent decline in 2012, the global semiconductor market in 2013 will grow by 4.9 percent to $317.9 billion, up from $302.9 billion.

IHS put the 2013 chip marker growth slightly lower and the market size slightly larger than does Gartner Inc., which provided a similar forecast recently. Also IHS puts Micron above SK Hynix while Gartner had this in reverse order with SK Hynix ranked fourth and Micron ranked fifth (see Qualcomm, Micron rise in 2013 chip market).

The two companies are agreed that an undersupply of memory components causing an increase in average selling prices for memory is driving the market value. IHS expects the DRAM and NAND flash memory markets to increase in value by 35.0 and 27.7 percent, respectively, in 2013.

Preliminary ranking of top 20 chip vendors worldwide by sales in 2013 (in dollar millions). Source: IHS Inc. (*Significat impact on growth from Intel's acquisition of Fujitsu Wireless, Iyxs acquisition of Samsung 4- and 8-bit MCU business, Micron's acquisition of Elpida Memory Inc. and Broadcom's acquisition of LTE-related assets from Renesas.

"Memory chips are coming to the rescue of the semiconductor business in 2013," said Dale Ford, head of electronics and semiconductor research at IHS. "Solid pricing and expanding demand for DRAM and NAND in smartphones and tablets have caused revenue for these memory devices to surge. Without these two high-performing product segments, the semiconductor industry would attain zero growth this year."

Sony, Renesas Electronics, and Rohm Semiconductor are set to deliver disappointing results with expected declines of 28.1, 15.3 and 14.3 percent, respectively. As a result, Renesas will drop to tenth position, down from sixth in 2012, and Sony will fall to No. 15, declining from eleventh. Rohm Semiconductor will completely fall out of the ranks of the top 20.

Intel will maintain its status as the largest semiconductor supplier. A projected semiconductor revenue decline of 1.0 percent will