Top 10 Global Fabless Companies Achieve KRW 35 Trillion in 2Q Sales, Up 61% YoY

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] While the global semiconductor industry showed overall growth in the second quarter of this year, the fabless market recorded a sales increase of over 60%, mainly among Taiwanese companies, due to rising semiconductor prices.

According to Taiwanese market research firm TrendForce on the 18th, the combined sales of the world's top 10 fabless companies in the second quarter reached $29.8 billion (approximately 35 trillion KRW), marking a 60.8% increase compared to the same period last year. TrendForce stated, "The rankings of the top 5 companies remained largely unchanged from the previous quarter, but positions 6 to 10 saw shifts due to completion of acquisition procedures and sales expansion by individual companies." The fabless market is growing primarily around U.S. and Taiwanese companies. These companies also showed high sales growth rates during the second quarter of this year.

(Data provided by TrendForce)

Leading the industry, U.S.-based Qualcomm posted second-quarter sales of $6.472 billion, a 70% increase compared to the same period last year. Qualcomm, which specializes in communication chips, saw significant growth in its processor and radio frequency (RF) front-end businesses due to strong demand for flagship and premium 5G products from major smartphone manufacturers in the second quarter. TrendForce also noted that Qualcomm’s Internet of Things (IoT) business benefited from the expansion of remote learning caused by COVID-19.

Ranked second, U.S. company NVIDIA recorded $5.843 billion in sales in the second quarter, showing a 68.8% increase compared to the same period last year. NVIDIA is the world’s number one graphics processing unit (GPU) manufacturer. Demand for NVIDIA’s high-performance gaming graphics cards was strong due to cryptocurrency mining needs, and increased demand for high-performance computing (HPC) products in the data center sector led to sales growth of 91.1% and 46%, respectively, for gaming graphics cards and data center solutions compared to the same period last year.

U.S.-based AMD, ranked fifth in the industry, recorded the highest sales growth among the top 10 companies with a 99.3% increase compared to the same period last year. TrendForce explained that the gaming console market performed well, revenues in the enterprise market increased significantly, and the number of customers adopting AMD’s server central processing units (CPUs) also rose.

Among Taiwanese companies, MediaTek, ranked fourth in the industry, saw its smartphone semiconductor-related sales, its main focus, increase by more than 140% in the second quarter, reaching total sales of $4.954 billion, a 98.8% growth compared to the same period last year. Taiwanese company Novatek also recorded second-quarter sales of $1.219 billion, a 96.0% increase compared to the same period last year.

TrendForce forecasted, "Sales are expected to slow down in the third quarter due to decreased demand for certain components." However, considering the ongoing semiconductor shortage and the fact that foundry companies’ new production capacities have not yet entered mass production, it is expected that fabless companies’ sales will further expand in the second half of the year, albeit at a limited level."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.