To: Maurice Winn who wrote (8470 ) 2/2/2022 11:16:54 AM From: elmatador Respond to How Intel squandered the boom in chip demand and lost its semiconductor crownEAMON BARRETT January 20, 2022 12:41 PM GMT+3semiconductor makers have made good use of that scarcity to boost sales and score record revenues during the “ chip crisis ” of 2021. research from Gartner , revenues across global semiconductor makers surged 25.1% last year with sales topping $500 billion for the first time. The “combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases” drove average sales prices upward, says Gartner research vice president Andrew Norwood, earning chipmakers record revenues.Intel , pioneer of the chip industry, lost its top sales spot to rival Samsung. And reclaiming the lead won’t be easy, since the good times might not last for chipmakers. The revenue-boosting chip shortage threatens to reverse into a chip glut in the years ahead, erasing the scarcity that has driven sales upward and putting downward pressure on chip prices.Samsung Electronics , which dethroned Intel as the world’s leading chipmaker by revenues for the first time since 2018.Samsung’s revenue surged 31.6% last year, to $75.9 billion. Samsung’s incredible growth was buoyed by its memory-chip segment, which saw sales surge 34% in 2021, boosted by work-from-home demand for personal electronics and cloud services. Intel’s sales, meanwhile, grew just 0.5%, to $73 billion. suffered multiple setbacks in the past two years. In 2020, the California company delayed the launch of its most cutting-edge chipset by two years, losing ground to competition. Then, Intel lost a lucrative and long-standing contract to supply chips for Apple’s Macs.outsourcing production of its core chipsets to a third-party manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), for the first time ever, as Intel’s own manufacturing plants were no longer advanced enough to produce the chips in house .TSMC on its ranking of semiconductor makers because the Taiwanese group is a pure-play foundry—meaning TSMC doesn’t produce chips for itself, it only makes chips for clients, like Intel. If Gartner did include TSMC in its list, the Taiwanese company would rank third by sales.announced an 18.5% growth in revenue for 2021, hitting $57.45 billion in sales. The group, which is the world’s largest contract chipmaker, anticipates strong demand for chipsets will continue well into the future, too. TSMC also announced it would spend $44 billion on expanding production capacity this year, as the group looks to invest a total $100 billion across a three-year period.ELMAT: If China grabs Taiwan where the microchips will come from said on an analyst call last Thursday.“chip shortage” might drag on until chipmakers like TSMC can bring extra capacity online, likely at the end of next year. But analysts at Morningstar warn that building excess production capacity could turn the chip shortage into a chip glut by 2024.automakers , which were largely responsible for sparking the chip crisis, readjust sales predictions for the year ahead. Morningstar also warns that although chipmakers will see some increased demand from emerging fields like 5G and Bitcoin mining, the new demand will eat up 40% of planned capacity expansion.fortune.com
