Download the 2010 OC CHIPMAKERS List (pdf)
Orange County’s biggest chipmakers have seen a return to hiring in the past year amid a healthy recovery for the semiconductor industry overall.
According to this week’s Business Journal list, the area’s 20 biggest chipmakers posted a 7% rise in local employees in the past year for a total of 4,701 workers.
Last year, the companies on the list reported a 3% loss in total workers.
The job recovery is happening against the backdrop of a big jump in chip sales coming off of an exceedingly bad 2009.
Global 2010 chip sales are expected to grow more than 31% from last year, to $300 billion, according to Stamford, Conn.-based market researcher Gartner Inc.
In September, Gartner upped its chip forecast from a previous outlook of 27% sales growth from last year.
The big increase partially owes to beneficial comparisons to a weak 2009 and also to a pickup in global demand for various business and consumer electronics.
The list was once again lead by No. 1 Irvine-based communications chipmaker Broadcom Corp., which resumed hiring in the past year after a pause during the downturn.
The company, which makes chips for computers, cell phones and consumer electronics, added 245 jobs here for a total of 2,250, up 12% from a year earlier.
“2010 has been both an exciting and challenging time for human resources at Broadcom,” said Terri Timberman, executive vice president of human resources. “We continue to look for talented engineers and other professionals.”
The company also counts some 100 college interns working for Broadcom here, Timberman said.
Excluding Broadcom’s gains, the remaining 19 chipmakers saw a 3% gain.
Tower
No. 2 Newport Beach-based Jazz Semiconductor Inc., part of Israel’s Tower Semiconductor Ltd., added 50 jobs here after a year of reorganization.
Jazz, which operatesunder the brand name TowerJazz, reported 650 workers here, up 8% from a year ago.
Most of the new hires are at the company’s chip factory in Newport Beach, with some in research and development, a spokeswoman for Jazz said.
Tower Semiconductor bought Jazz in 2008 for $170 million.
The company has integrated Jazz into its operations, which also counts two chip factories in Israel.
The move doubled its sales to about $500 million this year.
“Our sales growth certainly validates the positive impact of the strategy,” Chief Executive Russell Ellwanger said. “We believe we have been successful at presenting TowerJazz as one company. The integration has gone very well.”
No. 3 Conexant Systems Inc. of Newport Beach dropped one spot on the list with a decline of 11% in its local worker count.
Conexant has some 250 workers here, down from 280 a year earlier.
“For the past year our employee count has been essentially flat, but we are hiring for select positions in a market environment that is challenging,” a company spokeswoman said.
The list is mostly made up of what are called “fabless” chip companies, which design chips here but don’t operate factories to produce them.
Fabless chipmakers usually are heavy in research and development and hire lots of engineers. They have their chips made by contractors that mostly are in Asia.
The two exceptions are No. 4 Microsemi Corp. and TowerJazz.
Seven chipmakers on the list posted gains this year. Two saw job losses. Three were flat and eight were Business Journal estimates.
The chipmakers list has reshuffled in recent years amid a wave of consolidation and reorganization.
The companies on the list saw few major changes this year with the exception of No. 9 Irvine’s Teridian Semiconductor Corp., which was bought in April in a record-setting chip deal for the area.
Teridian, a maker of chips for energy meters, was bought for $315 million by Sunnyvale’s Maxim Integrated Products Inc.
The deal made a spectacular exit for Teridian’s investors, who got back nearly 20 times what they paid five years earlier.
Teridian has more than half of the market for chips that go into a new type of electricity meter that operates as part of a smart grid designed to reduce energy consumption.
It’s a market that’s been soft until a recent trend that has seen more utilities adopt smart-grid technology.
Teridian has 94 workers here, up 6% from a year earlier, and operates as part of the microcontroller unit of Maxim.
Microsemi
Irvine’s Microsemi, which makes chips for military, aerospace and consumer uses, has been a voracious acquirer this year.
Last month it agreed to buy Mountain View’s Actel Corp. for $430 million.
It also bought Bethesda, Md.-based Arxan Defense Systems Inc. and Atlanta’s VT Silicon Inc.—both small chipmakers—for undisclosed terms.
Microsemi has 243 workers here, up 2% from a year ago.
No. 20 Laguna Niguel-based Symwave Inc., a maker of chips started by Broadcom alums, is likely to seek a buyer who would provide more working capital by the year’s end, according to Chief Executive Yossi Cohen.
Symwave makes chips for the next generation of universal serial bus ports, the most popular way of connecting consumer electronics to a PC.
Its biggest customer is Lake Forest-based disk drive maker Western Digital Corp., which has a sizeable lineup of external storage drives that it markets to consumers as a way to store photos, music and other files.
Other customers include Western Digital’s top rival, Scotts Valley-based Seagate Technology LLC; France’s LaCie Group SA; and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Ltd., a unit of Japan’s Hitachi Ltd.
Symwave has 20 workers here, flat from a year ago. It also has workers in San Diego and a development center in China.
