Gartner Announces 2019 Global Semiconductor Spending
Apple Performs Well in Wearable Market, Samsung SSD Performance Slumps
Macroeconomic slowdown and sharp drop in memory prices are the main causes.

Apple reclaimed the top spot among semiconductor companies in 2019, accounting for 8.6% of global semiconductor market spending. Samsung ranked second with a market share of only 8%.
According to the '2019 Global Top 10 Semiconductor Purchasers Preliminary Survey' released by Gartner on February 6, semiconductor spending by major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in 2019 decreased due to falling memory prices.

Apple reclaimed the top spot, overtaking Samsung Electronics, which had held the number one position for the past three years, thanks to strong sales of wearable products such as the Apple Watch and AirPods, while Huawei maintained third place despite the U.S.-China trade dispute.

Last year, global uncertainty and a macroeconomic slowdown also had a significant impact on semiconductor purchasing companies. Political friction, including the U.S.-China trade dispute, Brexit, the South Korea-Japan conflict, and the Hong Kong protests, intensified, while global economic growth slowed.

These macroeconomic conditions cooled demand for electronic equipment, and total electronic device sales in 2019 recorded $4.7 billion, a 0.2% decrease from the previous year. The share of semiconductor purchases by the top 10 global semiconductor design TAM companies decreased from 39.9% in 2018 to 39.5% in 2019.
Despite reducing its semiconductor spending by 12.7% in 2019, Apple achieved excellent results in the wearable market and increased spending on adopting triple camera modules for new iPhone models.

Samsung Electronics ceded the top spot to Apple last year after reducing its semiconductor spending by approximately 21.4%. Gartner believes this was not solely due to the sharp drop in memory prices. It was analyzed that Samsung Electronics' sluggish performance in most electronics markets, particularly in the smartphone and solid-state drive (SSD) markets, also had an impact.

Huawei, which ranked 3rd, reduced its semiconductor spending by 1.8% in 2019 compared to the previous year, while Xiaomi, which ranked 8th, was the only one among the top 10 companies to increase its semiconductor spending by about 1.4%.

“All of the top five companies reduced their semiconductor purchasing spending in 2019, which can be seen as being influenced by the sharp drop in memory prices,” said Masatsune Yamaji, a senior research analyst at Gartner. “In 2018, the situation was severe enough that memory semiconductors accounted for 45% of OEMs’ total semiconductor spending, but in 2019, the top five OEMs reduced their memory purchasing share to 36%, contributing to improved computing performance by providing better processors and larger memory capacities.”