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Worldwide semiconductor revenue amounted to $466.2 billion in 2020, an increase of 10.4 per cent from 2019, according to final results by Gartner, Inc.
“Memory, GPUs and 5G chipsets led semiconductor growth, driven by hyperscale, PC, ultramobile and 5G handset end-market demand, while automotive and industrial electronics suffered due to lower spending or a pause in spending owing to Covid-19,” said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner.
As for market players, Intel retained its position as the number one global semiconductor vendor by revenue in 2020, followed by Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron. Intel had a 15.6 per cent market share in 2020, followed by Samsung Electronics with 12.4 per cent. SK Hynix and Micron Technology had a market share of 5.5 per cent and 4.7 per cent, respectively. Qualcomm came in fifth with a market share of 3.8 per cent, as per data from Gartner.
Intel’s semiconductor revenue grew 7.4 per cent, “driven by the growth of its core client and server CPU businesses,” as per the report.
Overall, the top performers in the top 10 were NVIDIA and MediaTek.NVIDIA had a market share of 2.3 per cent, taking up the ninth position while MediaTek had a market share of 2.4 per cent, ranking eighth on the list.
“NVIDIA’s 45.2 per cent growth was primarily driven by the company’s gaming-related and data centre businesses. MediaTek’s revenue grew 38.1 per cent in 2020 driven by the disruption to Huawei’s business throughout the year,” the report said.
Memory: second-best performing device
Memory, which accounted for 26.7 per cent of semiconductor sales in 2020, was the second best-performing device category, experiencing a 13.5 per cent increase in revenue.
“Memory benefited from the key trend in 2020 — the shift to home working and learning — which fuelled increased server build from hyperscale vendors to satisfy online working and entertainment, as well as a surge in PCs and ultramobile,” said Norwood.
Within memory, NAND flash experienced the best performance with revenue growth of 25.2 per cent due to a shortage in H120.
“In 2021 both NAND flash and DRAM will be in shortage, sending pricing higher though the year and revenues rocketing by around 25 per cent” said Norwood. “This sets memory focused Samsung up with a good chance of recapturing the top spot in the semiconductor market from Intel in 2021.”
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