Broadcom Limited, Qualcomm and NVIDIA respectively taking first, second and third place in the revenue ranking among the major IC design companies.

According to TrendForce's latest ranking of the global top 10 fabless IC design houses, Qualcomm recorded a revenue growth in this third quarter while MediaTek experienced a drop in smartphone chip shipments, resulting in more than 18% revenue decline for two consecutive quarters. Although MediaTek introduced P23 and P30 products in response to the demand in high-end smartphone market, Qualcomm is considerably competitive in price and models as its high-end product lines have applied 14nm process technology, together with Snapdragon 636 and Snapdragon 660 that have Kryo CPU built in.

In this third quarter, NVIDIA continued its revenue growth and ranked first in terms of year-on-year growth rate. The growth was mainly brought by its game segments and data center. NVIDIA game segments increased from USD 1,133 million in the second quarter of 2017 to USD 1,436 million in the third quarter, with a year-on-year growth rate of 31.8% and a quarterly growth rate of 26.7%. Its data center recorded a third-quarter revenue of USD 472 million compared to USD 413 million in the previous quarter, a quarterly growth rate of 14.3% and a year-on-year growth rate of 124.7%.

AMD had good performance as well in this quarter, with the average products price increasing thanks to shipments of the new generation of processors and graphics processing units. The positive market feedback led to a net profit of 71 million US dollars in the third quarter, a new high of quarterly revenue and quarterly net profit since 2014. With an annual net loss of USD 497 million in 2016, AMD is expected to gradually recover from the gloom this year.

As for Broadcom and Qualcomm, Qualcomm's Board of Directors has unanimously rejected Broadcom's acquisition proposal in an official statement. But based on Broadcom's successful acquisitions in the past, it is believed that Broadcom will continue to negotiate with Qualcomm's Board of Directors and key shareholders, forcing the Board to agree with the acquisition proposal. If so, Broadcom will likely come under antitrust scrutiny from the governments worldwide.