Top 10 chip buyers jack up their sourcing by 25% in 2021: Report

The Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), however, faced a production disruption due to the semiconductors shortage and Covid-19 in 2021, but top 10 companies increased their spending on chip by 25% which accounted over 42% of the entire market.   

“Semiconductor vendors shipped more chips in 2021, but the OEMs’ demand was far stronger than the vendors’ production capacity,” said Masatsune Yamaji, research director at Gartner.  

According to a Gartner report, Apple remained at the leading semiconductor spender in 2021 at $68,269 million, followed by second placed Samsung, which shelled out $45,775 million.   

Likewise, Lenovo came third by forking out $25,283, followed by BBK Electronics at $23,350 million and Dell Technologies at $21,092.  

As per Gartner, Apple increased its spending on memory by 36.8% and on non-memory chips by 20.2% in 2021. However, it decreased its demand for computing micro processing units (MPUs) due to the shift to its own in-house-designed application processors. Samsung Electronics increased its memory spending by 34.1% and non-memory chip spending by 23.9% in 2021.   

The average selling prices (ASPs) of semiconductor chips, such as microcontroller units, general-purpose logic integrated circuits (ICs), and a wide variety of application-specific semiconductors, increased by 15% or more in 2021.   

“The semiconductor shortage also accelerated OEMs’ double booking and panic buying, causing a huge spike in their semiconductor spending,” maintained Yamaji.