The statistic depicts sales revenue from the global semiconductor industry from 2012 to 2018. In 2018, revenue from the global semiconductor industry rose to 476.7 billion U.S. dollars.
Leading semiconductor vendors – additional information
The global semiconductor industry has grown relatively steadily for several years, with an unprecedented spike in 2010 when the year-on-year revenue growth rate reached 32 percent. Post-2010 growth has been less impressive, but has generally hovered between 0 and 10 percent. 2017 witnessed a booming semiconductor revenue, with the year-on-year growth reaching 22.2 percent, due to higher prices as a result of supply shortage. Driven by the memory market, the 2018 market also experienced a less impressive but still strong 13.4 percent growth.
In 2018, Samsung strengthened its number one position in the market after overtaking Intel to become the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker in 2017, and was responsible for earning 75.9 billion U.S. dollars of the industry’s total revenue. That year, the South Korea-based company held a 15.9 percent share of the total market. Intel, the now second biggest player in the market, had an earning of 65.9 billion U.S. dollars in the semiconductor industry in 2018. The company's main business lies in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips, where it accounts for a significant portion of Intel's net revenue.
On the purchasing side, 2017 saw Samsung and Apple spend approximately 81.9 billion U.S. dollars between them on semiconductors. Apple's semiconductor expenditure had increased from 19 billion U.S. dollars in 2011 to 39 billion U.S. dollars in 2017, while Samsung's semiconductor spending increased from 19 billion to 43 billion in the same timeframe. Other technology company purchasers of semiconductors include Toshiba, Sony, Hewlett Packard (both Enterprise and Inc.), and Huawei, all of whom spend between 5 and 15 billion U.S. dollars a year on semiconductors.
