Samsung was the Top Semiconductor Vendor Globally in 2024

Samsung regained the top of the leaderboard of semiconductor companies by revenue, Gartner said on Feb. 3 in its yearly worldwide semiconductor vendor statistics report. Global semiconductor revenue hit $626 billion, up 18.1% from 2023.

“The rising demand for AI and generative AI (GenAI) workloads led data centers to become the second-largest market for semiconductors in 2024, behind smartphones,” said George Brocklehurst, vice president analyst at Gartner, in a press release.

Samsung takes the top of the semiconductor leaderboard

Samsung Electronics sat at the top of Gartner’s semiconductor leaderboard with $66.5 billion in revenue, rounded. The top five semiconductor vendors were:

1. Samsung ($66.5 billion in revenue).
2. Intel ($49.2 billion in revenue).
3. NVIDIA ($46 billion in revenue).
4. SK hynix ($42.8 billion in revenue).
5. Qualcomm ($32.4 billion in revenue).

A rebound in memory device prices helped Samsung take the top spot from Intel. NVIDIA moved up two spots to number five due to its success in the AI market. Despite Intel’s AI PC business and the Core Ultra chipset, the company’s semiconductor revenue growth stayed flat at 0.1% growth in 2024; Gartner said Intel’s AI accelerator and x86 business offset its successes. Gartner said NVIDIA’s strong AI business is the rocket engine behind its climb up the list.

SEE: The success of Chinese generative AI DeepSeek is divisive among Australian political and industry groups. 

Data centers, CPUs, and AI processors drive the increase

“Graphics processing units (GPUs) and AI processors used in data center applications (servers and accelerator cards) were the key drivers for the chip sector in 2024,” Brocklehurst said in the press release.

Data center semiconductor revenue alone was $112 billion in 2024, up from $64.8 billion in 2023.

Memory is also hot, with 71.8% revenue growth among memory products in 2024. High-bandwidth memory (HBM) production had a large impact, responsible for a significant portion of revenue for DRAM vendors; DRAM revenue overall grew by 75.4% in 2024.

Nonmemory revenue, which accounts for most (74.8%) semiconductor revenue, grew 6.9% in 2024.

Semiconductor revenue predicted for 2025

As of February 2024, Gartner said the semiconductor sector will continue to see rising revenue, with $705 billion of revenue predicted in 2025.

“Memory and AI semiconductors will drive near-term growth,” Brocklehurst said. Specifically, HBM revenue will increase and make up a larger share of the total DRAM revenue.