Semiconductor sales fall 8.2% to $526.8 billion in 2023, but AI and automotive growing

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), sales of the global semiconductor industry in 2023 will decrease by approximately $47 billion to $526.8 billion, representing a drop of 8.2% compared to the record year of 2022, when sales were $574.1 billion. However the second half of the year was marked by a significant increase in sales.

Europe was the only region where semiconductor sales grew by 4%. Chip sales were down 5.2% in America, 3.1% in Japan, and China saw the biggest decline – 14%.

Weak chip sales in the first half of the year were due to inventory adjustments in the consumer PC, consumer electronics and server sectors. Still, chip sales jumped to $146 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 11.6% from the fourth quarter of 2022 and up 8.4% from the third quarter of 2023. December was also a successful month, with sales of $48.6 billion, up 1.5% from November.

Chip categories

Leaders in supply are chips in the logic product segment, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Array) and similar data processing devices. Their annual sales volume amounted to $178.5 billion, exceeding the indicators of the next three categories in total.

In second place in terms of revenue is the memory segment, with a turnover of $92.3 billion, which is due to a decrease in prices for 3D NAND and DRAM in the first half of the year.

Sales of microcontrollers and automotive integrated circuits increased by 11.4% and 23.7%, respectively, compared to the previous year. Microcontroller revenue totaled $27.9 billion, while automotive integrated circuit revenue reached a new high of $42.2 billion. This indicates rapid growth in demand for microcircuits from automotive and AI device manufacturers, as these industries are using more semiconductors than ever before.