Article reprinted from "Core Speed"
On March 24, Jibang Consulting released a research report showing that in 2021, due to the strong demand for various terminal applications, the wafer was out of stock, and the global IC industry was seriously in short supply, resulting in an increase in chip prices. According to statistics, in 2021, the world's top ten IC design companies revenue to 127.4 billion US dollars, an annual increase of 48%. Among them, Taiwan MediaTek benefited from the revenue of mobile phone chips increased by more than 90%, which promoted the annual revenue increase of more than 60% in 2021. Qualcomm continued to dominate the list, with Nvidia jumping to second, followed by it.
Jibang pointed out that among the top ten IC design factories in 2021, Qualcomm continues to sit firmly in the world, mainly due to the sales of single chips for mobile phone systems and IoT chips, which increased by 51% and 63% respectively, coupled with the diversified development of RF and automotive chip business, which is the key to Qualcomm's revenue growth of 51% in 2021.
Huida, ranked second, implemented software and hardware integration, and successfully surpassed Broadcom to climb to second place driven by the annual revenue growth of 64% and 59% of game graphics and data center revenue.
Broadcom benefited from the stable performance of the network chip, broadband communication chip and storage and bridging chip business, with revenue growing 18% year-on-year.
In the Part of Taiwan's IC Design Factory, MediaTek's strategy of focusing on single chips in mobile phone systems has produced miraculous results, benefiting from the increase in 5G penetration, the sales of mobile phone portfolios have increased by 93%, and are committed to increasing the proportion of high-end product portfolios, with revenue increasing by 61% annually, ranking fourth.
AMD's CPU and graphics processor revenue increased by 45% year-on-year, and the accelerated demand from the cloud enterprise increased revenue by 113% year-on-year in the enterprise, embedded and semi-customized segments, resulting in a 68% annual increase in AMD's total revenue.
The two major product lines of system single chip and display driver chip under Lianyong have both grown significantly, due to the improvement of product specifications, the increase in shipments and the benefits of price increases, the revenue increased by 79% year-on-year, and the revenue growth rate ranked in the top ten, successfully rising from the eighth place to the sixth place.
Realtek was driven by strong demand for Netcom and commercial laptop products, and the performance of audio and Bluetooth chips was also quite stable, with revenue growing by 43% year-on-year, rising from ninth to eighth. Xilinx is in ninth place.
Himax is the first industry to enter the list in 2021, due to the significant growth of large and small size drive chip revenue, respectively, 65% and 87% year-on-year, and the driver chip import car panel has been successful, the total revenue of more than 1.5 billion US dollars, an annual increase of 74%.
Dai Legg, which ranked tenth last year, was acquired by IDM giant Renesas. For the first time, Wonder entered the list, because the revenue of large and small size drive chips increased significantly, increasing by 65% and 87% respectively, and the driver chip imported into the car panel was successful, with a total revenue of more than 1.5 billion US dollars, an annual increase of 74%.
Looking forward to 2022, in the overall outlook, the demand for high-specification products such as high-performance computing, Netcom, high-speed transmission, servers, automobiles, and industrial applications will continue to increase, which will bring good business opportunities to IC design companies and drive the overall revenue growth.
However, in the face of terminal system manufacturers facing the problem of long and short material corrections, and the increase in wafer foundry costs, and the intensification of geopolitical conflicts and inflation problems, it will be detrimental to global economic growth, which may have an impact on the consumer electronics market that has already shown weakness, which are the tests that IC designers need to face in 2022.