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February 18, 2003 RELEASE

Release

Qualcomm Retains its Ranking as the Number One Fabless IC Supplier; Top Ten Fabless IC Suppliers' Sales Grow 19% in 2002
IC Insights' Newly Released McClean Report 2003 Details IC Industry Trends and Forecasts

Scottsdale, Arizona --- February 18, 2003 --- The top ten fabless IC companies for 2002 are listed in the table shown below. IC Insights considers a company fabless when it receives the majority of its finished wafer supply from IC foundries. In 2002, the top ten fabless companies represented about 60 percent of the total worldwide IC sales from fabless suppliers.

In 2002, there was no change in the ranking of the top three fabless IC suppliers. With graphics IC producer Nvidia growing 50 percent in 2002, Qualcomm (the largest supplier of CDMA cell phone chip sets) came close to losing its number one ranking. However, Qualcomm registered a fourth quarter 2002 IC sales increase of 47 percent (from $484 million in 3Q02 to $710 million in 4Q02) to again secure the number one position.

As shown, the companies in the 2002 top ten fabless IC supplier ranking registered a wide range of growth rates. The two Taiwanese companies were at opposite ends of IC sales growth spectrum with MediaTek (the leading supplier of ICs for optical storage drives) growing 91 percent and VIA (a leading PC peripheral chipset and MPU vendor) declining 28 percent. As shown, MediaTek jumped from being ranked as the 10th largest fabless IC supplier in 2001 to the 5th spot in 2002.

Cirrus Logic ranked 8th in the top ten fabless IC company listing in 2001, but fell out of the top ten ranking to the 13th position in 2002. The company’s sales dropped to $304 million in 2002 from $534 million in 2001, a decline of 43 percent. With 4Q02 sales of only $61 million, Cirrus Logic is unlikely to re-enter the top ten ranking in 2003.

As shown, all but two of the top ten fabless IC companies are headquartered in North America. This is the primary reason why almost two-thirds (63 percent) of 2002 pure-play foundry IC sales were to the Americas region.

Over the past five years, fabless IC sales results have been much better than those registered in the overall IC market. In 2002, the total top ten fabless IC company growth rate was almost 10 times the growth rate of the worldwide IC market (19 percent versus 2 percent). IC Insights expects this trend to continue through at least 2007.

About IC Insights

IC Insights, Inc., based in Scottsdale, Arizona, is dedicated to providing high-quality, cost-effective market research for the integrated circuit industry. Founded in 1997, IC Insights offers coverage of global economic trends, IC market forecasts, capital spending and fab capacity trends, product market details, and technology trends, as well as complete IC company profiles and evaluations of emerging markets for ICs.