Global chip revenue reaches $602 bn last year: Report

Global semiconductor revenue increased by 1.1 per cent in 2022 to total $601.7 billion, up from $595 billion in 2021, a new report said on Tuesday. According to Gartner, the combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors increased by 2.8 per cent in 2022 and accounted for 77.5 per cent of the market. “2022 began with many semiconductor devices in shortage resulting in extended lead times and increasing pricing which led to reduced electronic equipment production for many end markets. As a result, OEMs started hedging themselves from shortages by stockpiling chip inventory,” said Andrew Norwood, VP Analyst at Gartner. “However, by the second half of 2022, the global economy began to slow under the strain of high inflation, rising interest rates, higher energy costs and continued Covid lockdowns in China, which impacted many global supply chains,” he added. Samsung Electronics retained the top spot, despite revenue falling 10.4 per cent in 2022, primarily due to declines in memory and NAND flash sales, according to the report. Intel held on to the No. 2 position with a 9.7 per cent market share. However, the company was impacted by the significant decline of the consumer PC market and strong competition in its core x86 processor businesses and revenue growth declined by 19.5 per cent. Moreover, memory, which accounted for approximately 25 per cent of semiconductor sales in 2022, was the worst-performing device category, experiencing a 10 per cent revenue decrease, the report mentioned. Overall nonmemory revenue increased by 5.3 per cent in 2022, but performance varied greatly across device categories.