Revenue totalled US$466.2 billion in 2020, an increase of 10.4 per cent from 2019.
Memory, GPUs and 5G chipsets led semiconductor growth, driven by hyperscale, PC, ultramobile and 5G handset end-market demand, according to Gartner.
However 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.
Intel’s semiconductor revenue grew 7.4 per cent, driven by growth of its core client and server CPU businesses. Overall, the top performers in the top 10 were NVIDIA and MediaTek. NVIDIA’s 45.2 per cent growth was primarily driven by the company’s gaming-related and data center businesses. MediaTek’s revenue grew 38.1 per cent in 2020 driven by the disruption to Huawei’s business throughout the year.
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 revenue increase.
“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 ultramobiles,” said Norwood.
Within memory, NAND flash experienced the best performance with revenue growth of 25.2 per cent 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 per cent,” Norwood. “This sets memory focused Samsung up with a good chance of recapturing the top spot in the semiconductor market from Intel in 2021.”
