"In 2014, we saw a return to production growth in the traditional PC sector, after a 10.1 percent decline in 2013," Norwood adds.
"The smartphone market continued to perform well, with production growth of around 34 percent, down slightly from 39.5 percent in 2013, although there was a distinct shift to utility and basic smartphones away from premium handsets."
Norwood reports that tablet production, however, experienced a "sharp slowdown" from last year.
"DRAM revenues will hit $46.0 billion in 2014, an all-time high surpassing the previous record set back in 1995," he adds.
"However, in terms of the overall share of the semiconductor market, DRAM accounted for 13.5 percent in 2014, half of the 27.9 percent share it held back in 1995."
SK Hynix and Micron Technology benefited the most from the strong memory market, with the strongest growth of the top 10 vendors.
SK Hynix saw a second strong year of revenue growth propelled by the booming DRAM market with DRAM accounting for about 80 percent of the company's revenue.
Micron Technology moved up one place in the rankings in 2014 due to its 41 percent growth - its acquisition of Elpida Memory in 2013 helped make it one of the fastest-growth semiconductor vendors in the top 25.
Micron's DRAM business slightly underperformed the overall DRAM market as the company converted Fab 7 (formerly Tech Semiconductor) from DRAM to NAND in order to rebalance the portfolio following the Elpida acquisition.
This conversion improved the overall DRAM supply-and-demand balance, although it resulted in slower bit growth year over year. In 2014, DRAM accounted for just under 70 percent of Micron's revenue, and NAND flash accounted for slightly under 30 percent.
According to Norwood, there was significantly more merger and acquisition activity among the major vendors in 2014 than the previous year.
Among the most significant deals was Avago Technologies' acquisition of LSI, propelling the company into the top 25 semiconductor vendors for the first time. MStar Semiconductor was merged with
MediaTek after a prolonged merger, and ON Semiconductor acquired Aptina Imaging. Meanwhile, Infineon Technologies' bid for International Rectifier has yet to be completed.
After adjusting for M&A activity, the top 25 vendors grew at 10.0 percent, meaning the rest of the market saw a more respectable growth of 2.6 percent.