Global semiconductor revenue rose 25.1% in 2021, breached US$500b mark, says Gartner
24 Jan 2022
Global semiconductor revenue rose 25.1% in 2021 to total US$583.5 billion (about RM2.44 trillion), crossing the US$500 billion threshold for the first time.
In its preliminary results released last week, technology research and consulting firm Gartner Inc research vice-president Andrew Norwood said as the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry.
“The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors’ average selling prices higher, contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021,” he said.
Norwood added that the 5G smartphone market also helped drive semiconductor revenue, with unit production more than doubling to reach 555 million in 2021, compared with 250 million in 2020.
“US sanctions imposed on Huawei resulted in other Chinese smartphone OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) gaining share and fuelling growth for 5G chipset vendors such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and Skyworks.
“Meanwhile, HiSilicon, Huawei’s chip subsidiary, saw revenue decline from US$8.2 billion in 2020 to around US$1 billion in 2021,” he said.
Gartner added that Samsung Electronics regained the top spot from Intel for the first time since 2018, with revenue increasing 31.6% in 2021.
Its memory revenue grew 34.2% in 2021, in line with the growth rate of the overall memory market.
Intel dropped to the No. 2 position with a 0.5% growth in 2021, delivering the lowest growth rate among the top 25 vendors.
Top 10 semiconductor vendors by revenue worldwide in 2021 (millions of US dollars)
| 2021 rank | 2020 rank | Vendor | 2021 revenue | 2021 market share (%) | 2020 revenue | 2020-2021 growth (%) |
| 1 | 2 | Samsung Electronics | 75,950 | 13.0 | 57,729 | 31.6 |
| 2 | 1 | Intel | 73,100 | 12.5 | 72,759 | 0.5 |
| 3 | 3 | SK Hynix | 36,326 | 6.2 | 25,854 | 40.5 |
| 4 | 4 | Micron Technology | 28,449 | 4.9 | 22,037 | 29.1 |
| 5 | 5 | Qualcomm | 26,856 | 4.6 | 17,632 | 52.3 |
| 6 | 6 | Broadcom | 18,749 | 3.2 | 15,754 | 19.0 |
| 7 | 8 | MediaTek | 17,452 | 3.0 | 10,988 | 58.8 |
| 8 | 7 | Texas Instruments | 16,902 | 2.9 | 13,619 | 24.1 |
| 9 | 10 | NVIDIA | 16,256 | 2.8 | 10,643 | 52.7 |
| 10 | 14 | AMD | 15,893 | 2.7 | 9,665 | 64.4 |
| Others (outside top 10) | 257,544 | 44.1 | 209,557 | 22.9 | ||
| Total semiconductor | 583,477 | 100.0 | 466,237 | 25.1 |
Source: Gartner (January 2022)
Source: The Edge Markets
