According to news on February 14, market research organization Counterpoint pointed out that the global semiconductor market (including the storage industry) is expected to grow by 19% year-on-year in 2024, reaching 621 billion U.S. dollars. This shows that the semiconductor industry will rebound strongly after experiencing a downturn in 2023, mainly due to the surge in demand for artificial intelligence (AI), the growth in demand for memory chips, and the rebound in prices. However, the logic semiconductor market other than AI-related semiconductors has only shown a moderate recovery.
Specifically, driven by the recovery in demand for memory chips and rising prices in 2024, global memory chip market revenue is expected to surge by 64% year-on-year. In addition, driven by AI demand, the booming high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market has further supported the overall memory chip market. On the other hand, the key role of GPUs in AI model training and development has caused the global logic semiconductor market to grow by 11% year-on-year. Although demand in the automotive and industrial markets is weak, there are still some recovery trends, which will help the revenue growth of the global semiconductor industry.
According to the ranking of the world's top ten semiconductor brand manufacturers in 2024 based on semiconductor sales published by Counterpoint, Samsung Electronics ranks first in the world with a market share of 11.8%. Followed by SK Hynix (7.7%), Qualcomm (5.6%), Broadcom (5%), Intel (4.9%), Micron (4.8%), NVIDIA (4.3%), AMD (4.1%), MediaTek (2.6%), and Western Digital (2.5%). It should be pointed out that this statistics only covers semiconductor companies with their own brands (such as NVIDIA, Qualcomm, etc.), and does not include foundry suppliers (such as TSMC, UMC, etc.).
Counterpoint believes that Samsung continues to lead the global semiconductor market, with a market share of 11.8% in 2024, mainly due to the increase in demand for memory chips due to rising prices, inventory adjustments and replenishments in the smartphone business, and attracting AI/HPC customers to introduce advanced processes, despite facing HBM3e delays and low-end memory challenges.
SK Hynix and Micron also mainly benefited from the increase in demand for memory chips due to rising prices, and also benefited from the demand for HBM driven by AI applications.
Qualcomm, which ranks third, has a market share of 5.6% and sales growth of 14% year-on-year. It mainly benefits from the recovery of Android smartphones and the growth of its automotive business. The IoT market recovery is relatively slow.
Intel, ranked fifth, faces severe challenges. Affected by weak demand in the PC and server markets and operational challenges, market competition pressure has intensified.
Counterpoint Research analysts said that the United States is still the core of the global semiconductor industry, has many high-value semiconductor companies, and plays a key role in promoting global innovation and market growth. As the demand for AI and high-performance computing continues to grow, U.S. semiconductor leaders will continue to play a pivotal role in future market competition.