Recently, Gartner, a well-known research organization, announced that the overall sales of the semiconductor market in 2021 increased by 25.1% to $583.5 billion. Samsung Electronics' overall chip sales surged 31.6 percent to $75.9 billion with the growth of its storage business; surpassing Intel to return to the championship throne.
It is no accident that Samsung Electronics has returned to the annual semiconductor revenue manufacturer champion. Since Q2 2021, Samsung Electronics' quarterly ranking has surpassed Intel to rank first. For the year-on-year growth rate, Intel is the slowest only 0.5%, while the old rival AMD is from the fourteenth place in 2020 to the tenth position in 2021 with a growth of 64.4%.
Of course, as a veteran semiconductor chip giant Intel, there is actually a layout for the slowdown in revenue growth. It is reported that Intel ordered the next generation of EUV lithography machine (NA 0.55 high numerical aperture EUV lithography machine) from the supplier ASML as early as 2018, and compared with the 0.33NA lithography machine, the resolution of 0.55NA was upgraded from 13nm to 8nm, which can expose more complex integrated circuit patterns faster and better. This move may be to help their own vision of 20A or 18A in 2025, that is, 5nm and 5nm+ process nodes.
Not only is it seizing the latest lithography machine equipment, according to foreign media reports, Intel is planning to build a production base in Germany and other facilities in Italy and France. Meanwhile, Intel CEO Pat Kissinger is urging the U.S. and Europe to push ahead with efforts to revive chip manufacturing. Solving the problem of excessive concentration of chip production in Asia requires government funding, Kissinger said.
In this way, the semiconductor market pattern in 2022, which has begun, will undergo no small changes, but only manufacturers can effectively solve the big problem of global chip shortage.