Mainland chipmakers among world's top 10

The Chinese mainland is making fresh progress in manufacturing semiconductors.

For the first time, three Chinese mainland chipmakers accounted for more than 10 percent of the global foundry revenue in the first quarter of this year, a new report has stated.

Foundry is industry parlance for contract chipmaking. Data from TrendForce, a market research and intelligence provider, showed China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp ranked fifth among the top 10 global foundry revenue earners in the January-March quarter, with a market share of 5.6 percent.

Shanghai-based HuaHong Group, another major Chinese semiconductor maker, ranked sixth with a market share of 3.2 percent.

Nexchip, based in Hefei, Anhui province, took ninth place, with a market share of 1.4 percent.

"Although demand for consumer electronics remains weak, structural demand growth in the semiconductor industry, including for servers, high-performance computing, automotive and industrial equipment, has not flagged, becoming a key driver for medium- and long-term foundry growth," TrendForce said.

At the same time, due to robust wafer production at higher pricing in the first quarter, quarterly output value reached $31.96 billion, up 8.2 percent quarter-on-quarter, a new high for the 11th consecutive quarter. The rise, however, was marginally less than that seen in the previous quarter.