According to the new report, strong demand for DRAM and NAND flash chips drove Samsung’s growth last year. It could be in for a similar performance this year thanks to sustained demand for its memory chips. The ongoing supply constraints and component shortages may persist throughout 2022 and affect shipments. However, an increased price could offset that. Despite the unprecedented issues that the semiconductor industry encountered in 2021, pretty much every vendor, including those that only make smartphone SoCs and GPUs, saw an increase in annual revenues in 2021. Overall, global revenue from semiconductor chips reached $554.1 billion last year, which is a 19.1 percent YoY increase from $465.4 billion in 2020. However, as Counterpoint notes, the industry is getting more centralized. The top 15 semiconductor vendors saw a 27 percent growth in 2021 as opposed to a 1.3 percent YoY revenue drop experienced by the remaining vendors. Samsung’s compatriot SK Hynix was the third-biggest vendor last year with a revenue of $37.1 billion. American duo Micron ($30.0 billion) and Qualcomm ($29.2 billion) make up the top five. Growth-wise, AMD sits at the top with a 66 percent YoY increase in revenue, reaching $16.2 billion. Nvidia (61.9 percent), MediaTek (60.5 percent), and Qualcomm (52.0 percent) also saw strong growth in semiconductor revenue last year. You can check out the full chart at the end of this article.
Samsung enjoyed a solid financial performance in 2021
Samsung recently published its earnings report for 2021, revealing that its revenues reached a new historic high of KRW 279.6 trillion (roughly $232.1 billion). The company’s operating profit of KRW 51.63 trillion (~$42.9 billion) last year is also its highest since 2018. It said most of its business divisions, including the semiconductor division, fared well in 2021. Now, the latest report from Counterpoint Research confirms that the Korean behemoth had a solid performance in the semiconductor market last year. Going forward, Samsung is looking to expand its foundry capacity with a new $17 billion chip factory in Taylor, Texas. Companies like TSMC and Intel are also constructing new factories in the US as the industry comes together to mitigate the ongoing chip shortage issues and also avoid similar issues in the future. Counterpoint expects some of the new factories to be operational by 2023. New advancements in the tech industry — looking at you, metaverse — will drive the growth of the semiconductor market.
