Last Year Semiconductor Market Size $595.7 Billion... Samsung Ranks 1st

Omdia Announces Global Semiconductor Market Statistics for Last Year

The global semiconductor market size reached a record high of $595.7 billion last year. Samsung Electronics surpassed Intel to become the market leader in sales. However, this statistic excludes the Taiwanese foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) company TSMC.

The market research firm Omdia announced on the 7th that the semiconductor market size reached $595.7 billion last year, up from $592.8 billion in 2021.

Omdia reported that although the semiconductor market grew to an all-time high last year, detailed statistics showed a poor performance. The automotive semiconductor market size increased by 21% compared to the previous year, making the overall market appear to have grown, but in reality, negative growth continued.

Quarterly Sales Trends in the Memory Semiconductor Market / [Image Source=Omdia]

Semiconductor companies saw their performance shrink from the second half of last year due to sluggish market conditions. Accordingly, semiconductor market sales in Q4 last year recorded $132.4 billion, which was only 82% of the same period last year ($161.1 billion). In particular, the memory semiconductor market, which is highly affected by economic conditions, recorded sales of $24.1 billion in that quarter, about half of the nearly $45 billion recorded in the same period last year.

Omdia explained that the memory market downturn was prominent due to reduced IT demand caused by the decline in COVID-19 spread and macroeconomic contraction following central banks' interest rate hikes worldwide. Unlike the increased production from memory manufacturers' investment expansions, demand decreased, leading to oversupply and excess inventory, which was also identified as a problem.

Rino Zheng, Senior Lead Analyst of Omdia's DRAM division, said, "In Q4 last year, memory suppliers expanded sales to reduce excess inventory, causing prices to drop significantly," and added, "Omdia predicts this trend will continue into Q1."

Last Year's Top 10 Global Semiconductor Companies /
[Image Courtesy of Omdia]

The top 10 companies by sales last year, as compiled by Omdia, included ▲Samsung Electronics (1st) ▲Intel (2nd) ▲Qualcomm (3rd) ▲SK Hynix (4th) ▲Broadcom (5th) ▲Micron (6th) ▲AMD (7th) ▲NVIDIA (8th) ▲Texas Instruments (9th) ▲MediaTek (10th).

Samsung Electronics ranked 2nd in 2021 behind Intel but rose to 1st place last year. However, this statistic excludes foundry companies. TSMC recorded sales of 2,263.892 billion New Taiwan dollars (approximately $73.872 billion) last year. Including TSMC could change the top ranking. SK Hynix fell one rank from 3rd to 4th, trailing Qualcomm.

The company showing the most remarkable growth amid the sluggish market was the U.S. company AMD. AMD recorded sales of $23.777 billion last year, a 47.2% increase from the previous year. Its market ranking rose three places from 10th in 2021 to 7th last year. Omdia explained that AMD achieved this performance by adding $5 billion in sales through the acquisition of Xilinx.

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