Asia still dominates among EMS providers

In 2023, Top 50 sales accounted for USD 423 billion in revenue — a decline of USD 26 billion compared with the Top 50 sales of 2022. 

MMI tabulates its ranking information through an annual survey of over 100 of the largest EMS companies worldwide. And with the results of the MMI Top 50 survey now in, it can be said that 2023 was generally not a good growth year, with –5.8% for the overall growth, though there were still more positive results than negative.

As it turns out, only the top tier  EMS companies, Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) and Pegatron, had a bad year, while Tiers 2 and 3 did well in many cases, exhibiting excellent growth.

In recent years, the Top 50 expansion has received a boost from EMS giant Foxconn due to its size and strong growth rate. This year, Foxconn's revenue depressed the total industry growth as it experienced a worse year than in 2022. Pegatron also saw the same pattern as its competitor Foxconn. As pointed out by MMI, industry participants cannot expect these industry giants to continue to expand at double-digit rates, as these large numbers are difficult to sustain compared to those among the Tier 2–4, which have grown rapidly over the last few years due to acquisitions. The analysts point to Danish GPV as an example, the company among the top 50 with the highest growth rate of any other. Through acquisitions, GVP achieved 81.2% growth in 2023 and 65.1% in 2022.

In total, the APAC region accounted for around 74.7% of the Top 50 EMS revenue, the Americas contributed 22.8% of revenue, up 2.4%, while the EMEA region constituted 2.5%, an increase of 0.3%, mainly due to extensive activity in acquisitions. It took a minimum of USD 434 million in sales to make the Top 50 — a decrease of USD 14 million in revenue.

For 2023, the top 10 EMS providers accounted for 88.7% of Top 50 sales, down from 89.1% in 2022, illustrating that the EMS industry remains very top-heavy. The remaining 40 together produced a credible 12.6% growth rate, increasing from USD 44.5 billion in 2022 to a reported USD 50.1 billion in 2023.