Global semiconductor revenue up 25% in 2021, tops record $500 billion: Gartner

“As the global economy bounces back into 2021, the semiconductor supply chain appears to be lacking, particularly in the automotive industry,” said Andrew Norwood, Gartner’s vice president of research. “The resulting combination of strong demand as well as the cost of logistics and raw materials drove higher average selling prices (ASPs) of semiconductors, 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, while reaching 250 million in 2020. The US sanctions imposed on Huawei resulted in other Chinese smartphone OEMs staking and spurring development for 5G chipsets. Vendors such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and Skyworks. Meanwhile, Huawei’s chip subsidiary HiSilicon saw revenue decline from $8.2 billion in 2020 to nearly $1 billion in 2021,” Norwood said.

Samsung Electronics took the top spot from Intel for the first time since 2018, a 31.6% increase in revenue in 2021. Its memory revenue grew by 34.2% in 2021, in line with the growth rate of the overall memory market. Intel jumped to the No. 2 spot in 2021 with 0.5% growth, providing the lowest growth rate among the top 25 vendors.

Memory was again the best-performing device category, primarily due to increased server deployments by hyperscale cloud providers to meet remote working, learning and entertainment needs, as well as end-market demand for PCs and ultramobiles. due to increase in. Revenue increased to $42.1 billion in 2020, representing 33.8% of overall semiconductor revenue growth in 2021.

Within memory, DRAM had the best performance in 2021 with revenue growth of 40.4%, driving revenue to $92.5 billion in 2021. Strong demand for servers and PCs created the DRAM undersupply that drove double-digit ASPs through most of the year.