Semiconductor revenue grew 10.4% to $466.2 bn: Gartner

The latest Gartner report indicated the world leaders in semiconductor business based on their revenue in 2020.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue increased 10.4 percent to $466.2 billion in 2020, according to final results by Gartner.

“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.

Intel retained its position as the No. 1 global semiconductor vendor by revenue in 2020, followed by Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron.
Top semiconductor companies 2020Intel’s semiconductor revenue grew 7.4 percent, driven by growth of its core client and server CPU businesses.

The top performers in the top 10 were NVIDIA and MediaTek. NVIDIA’s 45.2 percent growth was driven by the company’s gaming-related and data center businesses. MediaTek’s revenue grew 38.1 percent in 2020 driven by the disruption to Huawei’s business throughout the year.

Memory, which accounted for 26.7 percent of semiconductor sales in 2020, was the second best-performing device category, experiencing a 13.5 percent revenue increase.

Within memory, NAND flash experienced the best performance with revenue growth of 25.2 percent due to a shortage in 1H20.

“In 2021 both NAND flash and DRAM will be in shortage, sending pricing higher though the year and revenues rocketing by around 25 percent” 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.”