Global semiconductor sales were $595 billion in 2021, according to figures from market researcher Gartner. This is an increase of 26.3 percent compared to 2020.
The events behind the current chip shortage are still impacting original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide. Still, the proliferation of 5G smartphones and strong demand and price increases for logistics and raw materials have pushed average semiconductor sales prices ( ASPs), contributing to significant revenue growth in 2021,” said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner.
Samsung Electronics recaptured Intel’s top spot for the first time since 2018, albeit by less than a percentage point. The company shows a 28 percent increase in sales in 2021. Intel’s sales fell by 0.3 percent, yielding a market share of 12.2 percent. Samsung has 12.3 percent of the market. Within the top 10, AMD and Mediatek had the strongest growth in 2021, with 68.6 percent and 60.2 percent, respectively.
The major shift in the ranking of semiconductor suppliers in 2021 was HiSilicon dropping out of the top 25. HiSilicon revenue declined 81 percent from $8.2 billion in 2020 to $1.5 billion in 2021, Norwood said. “This was a direct result of the US sanctions against the company and parent company Huawei.”
“This also impacted China’s semiconductor market share, as it fell from 6.7 percent in 2020 to 6.5 percent in 2021. On the other hand, South Korea had the biggest market share gain in 2021, as strong growth in the memory market-led South Korea to capture 19.3 percent of the global semiconductor market.”
In 2021, strong demand returned to the automotive and industrial markets compared to the weak, COVID-disrupted market in 2020. The automotive market outperformed all other markets, growing 34.9 percent in 2021. Wireless communications, which are dominated by smartphones, grew by 24.6 percent. The number of 5G handsets produced reached 556 million in 2021, compared to 251 million in 2020. Organizations have also upgraded their Wi-Fi infrastructure for employees returning to the office.
Memory, powered by DRAM, accounted for 27.9 percent of semiconductor sales in 2021 and experienced 33.2 percent sales growth. This is an increase of $41.3 billion from the previous year.
Memory has benefited from the main demand trend in recent years: the shift to home/hybrid working and learning. This trend has fueled a surge in server deployments by hyper-scale cloud service providers to meet online work and entertainment and a surge in market demand for PCs and ultramobile devices.
