Comparative performance of global semiconductor companies

This paper presents a performance evaluation for the global semiconductor industry. The evaluation is conducted via a series of comparative analyses based upon company-level variables. It includes the comparisons of market share and economic growth, employment and labor productivity, cost efficiency measured by the DEA approach, profit margin, R&D expenditure ratio, and growth trend of company's market value. The paper shows that US, Japanese, and emerging South Korean and Taiwanese semiconductor companies have become the major competitors in the global semiconductor industry. These companies hold different comparative strengths in terms of the multiple evaluation criteria employed in this paper.