Top10 semi buyers increased chip spending by 25.2% in 2021
The semiconductor shortage and the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global OEMs' production in 2021, but the top 10 OEMs increased their chip spending by 25.2% and accounted for 42.1% of the total market, according Gartner.
“Semiconductor vendors shipped more chips in 2021, but the OEMs’ demand was far stronger than the vendors’ production capacity,” says Masatsune Yamaji, research director at Gartner, in a new market share analysis.
The shortage of semiconductors have, as everyone has read by now, prevented companies from increasing their production; and this does not only relate to vehicles of course, but also various electronic equipment types, including smartphones and video game consoles.
But the chip shortage has also significantly increase selling prices, as pointed out by Gartner, which also meant that OEM's sent much more on semiconductor procurement in 2021 than previous years.
The research company recently stated that worldwide semiconductor revenue increased 25.1% in 2021 to total USD 583.5 billion, crossing the USD 500 billion threshold for the first time.
The average selling prices (ASPs) of semiconductor chips – such as microcontroller units, general-purpose logic integrated circuits (ICs), and a wide variety of application-specific semiconductors – increased by 15% or more in 2021.
“The semiconductor shortage also accelerated OEMs’ double booking and panic buying, causing a huge spike in their semiconductor spending,” says Yamaji.
Apple and Samsung have have pretty much bade the two top spots their home since 2011, swapping positions through the years. Gartner brings up Huawei's struggles to acquire chips – which led to the company dropping down from the No.3 spot to the No. 7 position in 2021. This provided an opportunity for other Chinese smartphone OEMs, such as BBK Electronics and Xiaomi, who both significantly increased their semiconductor spending as they successfully compensated for the loss of market share by Huawei in the smartphone market in 2021.
Top 10 companies by semiconductor design TAM, worldwide, 2021 (millions of USD)
| 2021 Rank | 2020 Rank | Vendor | 2021 Spending | 2021 Market Share (%) | 2020 Spending | 2020-2021 Growth (%) |
| 1 | 1 | Apple | 68,269 | 11.7 | 54,180 | 26.0 |
| 2 | 2 | Samsung Electronics | 45,775 | 7.8 | 35,622 | 28.5 |
| 3 | 4 | Lenovo | 25,283 | 4.3 | 19,023 | 32.9 |
| 4 | 6 | BBK Electronics | 23,350 | 4.0 | 14,258 | 63.8 |
| 5 | 5 | Dell Technologies | 21,092 | 3.6 | 16,814 | 25.4 |
| 6 | 8 | Xiaomi | 17,251 | 3.0 | 10,254 | 68.2 |
| 7 | 3 | Huawei | 15,382 | 2.6 | 22,710 | -32.3 |
| 8 | 7 | HP Inc. | 13,789 | 2.4 | 10,745 | 28.3 |
| 9 | 9 | Hon Hai Precision | 8,855 | 1.5 | 7,387 | 19.9 |
| 10 | 10 | Hewlett-Packard | 6,736 | 1.2 | 5,395 | 24.8 |
| Others (outside top 10) | 337,695 | 57.9 | 269,849 | 25.1 | ||
| Total semiconductor | 583,477 | 100.0 | 466,237 | 25.1 |
TAM = total available market
Apple get its No.1 spot in the semiconductor spending customer ranking in 2021. According to Gartner the company increased its spending on memory by 36.8% and on nonmemory chips by 20.2% in 2021. However, at the same time it decreased its demand for MPUs due to the shift to its own in-house-designed application processors.
Samsung increased both its memory spending by 34.1% and nonmemory chip spending by 23.9% in 2021. The increase of memory spending was according to Gartner not just a result of a rise of memory price, but also the company's growth in its target electronic equipment markets, especially the smartphone and SSD markets.
