Top 10 Companies by Semiconductor Design TAM, Worldwide, 2021

The semiconductor shortage and the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)' production in 2021, but the top 10 OEMs increased their chip spending by 25.2% and accounted for 42.1% of the total market, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

Apple and Samsung Electronics have retained the top two spots since 2011 while swapping ranks through the years. Chinese smartphone OEMs, such as BBK Electronics and Xiaomi, significantly increased their semiconductor spending as they successfully compensated for the loss of market share by Huawei in the smartphone market in 2021 (see Table 1).

$Apple (AAPL.US)$ remained at the top of the semiconductor spending customer ranking in 2021. Apple increased its spending on memory by 36.8% and on nonmemory chips by 20.2% in 2021. However, it decreased its demand for computing microprocessing units (MPUs) due to the shift to its own in-house-designed application processors.