Despite the disruptions in the semiconductor production and supply, the global semiconductor revenue increased 25.1% in 2021 to total $583.5 billion, crossing the $500 billion threshold for the first time, reported Gartner, Inc.
Andrew Norwood, Research Vice President at Gartner 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 price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.”
“The 5G smartphone market also helped drive semiconductor revenue, with unit production more than doubling to reach 555 million in 2021, compared to 250 million in 2020. U.S. sanctions imposed on Huawei resulted in other Chinese smartphone OEMs gaining share and fueling growth for 5G chipset vendors such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and Skyworks. Meanwhile HiSilicon, Huawei’s chip subsidiary, saw revenue decline from $8.2 billion in 2020 to around $1 billion in 2021,” he added.
The industry also saw a major reshuffle in ranking. Samsung Electronics regained the top spot while Intel moved to the second position. Intel held the top space since 2018. Samsung witnessed an increase in revenue by 31.6% in 2021. Its memory revenue grew 34.2% in 2021, in line with the growth rate of the overall memory market. On the other hand, Intel just experienced 0.5% growth in 2021, delivering the lowest growth rate among the top 25 vendors.
Memory retained the best-performing device category, primarily due to increased server deployments by hyperscale cloud providers to satisfy remote working, learning and entertainment needs. It also experienced a surge in end-market demand for PCs and ultramobiles. Revenue increased $42.1 billion over 2020 amounting to 33.8% of overall semiconductor revenue growth in 2021.
DRAM became the best performing segment within memory with revenue growth of 40.4% in 2021, increasing revenue to $92.5 billion in 2021. This revenue surge was pushed by strong demand from servers and PCs created a DRAM undersupply that drove double-digit ASPs through most of the year.
