Over the past few years, the rapid transformation in the digital industry has been due to the amazing transformation we’ve seen in the chip industry. From AMD to Intel or from Qualcomm to MediaTek, every other semiconductor based company is trying to make its mark in this huge market.
In 2020, even though there was a huge pandemic, the recent business reports from Semiconductor Industry Association or SIA, brought to you by ITHome, show a record chip sales worth $439 billion in 2020 itself.
Even though it is up by 6.5 percent year-on-year, no one can deny that the pandemic had a great impact on the business. So, it’s still impressive to see that the global chip sales saw an improvement over last year clearly missing almost a quarter and more for the pandemic.
Among the total sales, the U.S. chipmakers have generated sales of around $208 billion, or 47% of the total. However, the U.S. foreign purchases of chips amounted to a whopping $94.15 billion, up by 19.8% year-on-year.
Interestingly, even though the US alone makes up almost half of the world’s chip production, they account for only 12% of global production in the U.S., compared with 37% in 1990. In 2021, both TSMC and Samsung looks forward to building manufacturing plants in the US to revive US-based chip production.