Global semiconductor industry revenue in 2022 grew by 1.1% to $601.7 billion, according to a preliminary report by Gartner analysts cited by the Storage Newsletter. A year earlier, this figure was $595 billion. The total revenue of the top 25 semiconductor companies grew by 2.8%. They accounted for 77.5% of the global semiconductor market revenue.

“Last year began with a shortage of many semiconductor products, which led to longer delivery times and reduced production of electronic devices for many end markets. As a result, OEMs have started stockpiling chips. However, by the second half of 2022, global economic growth began to slow down due to high inflation, rising interest rates, higher energy costs and ongoing lockdowns in China due to COVID-19. All this [had a negative] impact on global supply chains. Consumers have also begun to cut spending, demand for PCs and smartphones has fallen, and businesses have begun cutting spending in anticipation of a global recession. Ultimately, all this led to a slowdown in the semiconductor market, ”commented Gartner analyst Andrew Norwood.

Samsung Electronics retained its position as the top-grossing semiconductor supplier in 2022, even though its revenue fell by 10.4%, mainly due to lower demand for memory chips, including NAND. Intel remained in second place. It accounted for 9.7% of the market. The company's revenue declined last year more than others - by 19.5%. This is due to falling demand in the consumer PC market and high competition in the x86-compatible processor segment. Note that AMD moved up from 10th to 7th in the rankings, showing a 42.9% increase, the largest in the top ten.

The memory market, which generated 25% of global semiconductor industry revenue last year, posted the largest drop in revenue (-10%). There was a significant decline here as early as mid-2022, when electronics OEMs began to deplete their stocks of memory chips, which they kept in the hope of renewed demand. The situation has now reached the point where most memory manufacturers have already announced plans to reduce capital expenditures in 2023, and some have even reduced the production of silicon wafers for the production of memory chips to reduce existing inventories in the hope of returning the market to a balance between supply and demand.

Semiconductor market revenue excluding memory chips grew in 2022 by 5.3%. However, the level of growth in different segments differed. The markets for analog equipment (growth by 19% compared to 15% in 2021) and discrete devices performed best. Demand in these segments has largely accumulated from the automotive and industrial markets, and has been underpinned by long-term growth trends in vehicle electrification, industrial automation and the energy transition.