Global chip revenues decline 8.8% in 2023: Report

New Delhi: The global semiconductor industry’s revenue declined 8.8 per cent in 2023 due to a slowdown in enterprise and consumer spending.

The overall 2023 semiconductor revenue rankings saw some big changes from 2022, like Intel reclaiming the top spot from Samsung as the latter suffered a lot from the memory sector downtrend as well as lacklustre smartphone business, according to Counterpoint Research.

AI provided positive news to the semiconductor industry, emerging as a key content and revenue driver, especially in the second half of the year.

NVIDIA appeared to be the largest beneficiary, followed by AMD. Both will be growing their AI-related businesses in the coming years.

“In general, we believe artificial intelligence (AI server, AI PC, AI smartphone, etc.) will continue to be a major organic growth driver in the semiconductor industry in 2024, followed by the memory sector’s rebound due to normalizing oversupply situation and demand recovery,” said senior analyst William Li.

The automotive sector could be another driver for the market due to content growth, which was already a key revenue driver for Infineon and STMicroelectronics in 2023, Li added.

Intel reclaimed its first place in semiconductor revenue rankings in 2023, though it reported a 16 per cent YoY decline in its revenue largely due to a double-digit YoY shipment decline in both the PC and server segments.

Samsung too was massively affected by the memory market slowdown in both DRAM and NAND segments, reporting a 38 per cent YoY decline in its revenue. The memory market was mainly hit by soft demand in the PC, server and smartphone segments as well as oversupply and excess inventory across the market.

SK hynix and Micron, two other major players in the memory market, also reported huge declines in their revenues at 33 per cent and 36 per cent YoY, respectively.