At the same time, Advanced Micro Devices Incorporated (AMD), headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the United States, moved up in the rankings to the number two position, thanks to the divestment of its manufacturing to GlobalFoundries.

In a report, IC Insights said the 7 chip-making companies that gained growth are companies Qualcomm (which ranked number one), RealTek, MediaTek, Atheros, Silicon Labs, MStar, and RickTek (which climbed in ranking to the 24th position).

IC Insights considers a company fabless when the company gets the majority of its finished wafer supply from IC foundries. In its ranking, the market research firm tracks only the sales of IC – it does not include revenues from optoelectronic, discrete semiconductor, or sensor. In 2009, there were 9 fabless IC companies which had sales worth $1.0 billion or more.

In its report, IC Insights said it has included all of the sales of AMD in 2009, though the spinoff happened late in the first quarter of 2009.

AMD excluded, the total sales of top 10 fabless companies dropped by 4 per cent in 2009. The IC sales of the rest of the fabless firms fell by 13 per cent, which according to IC Insights, reflected the tough economic conditions experienced by almost all chip-making companies.