IC Insights: This year, fabless semiconductors account for 32.9% of global market sales

IC Insights will release the latest edition of the 2020 McClean Report - A Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast of the Global Semiconductor Industry next month. The new report will focus on the top 50 semiconductor companies in terms of sales in 2020, as well as the top 50 fabless semiconductor companies and major semiconductor foundries.

Sales of fabless semiconductor companies are expected to surge 22% in 2020, while sales of IDM (integrated device manufacturers) semiconductor companies will only increase 6%.

There is a relatively close relationship between the annual market growth of fabless suppliers and IDMs. However, there is usually a big difference in sales growth between the two, as shown in the following figure:

According to data analysis by IC Insights, sales of fabless companies doubled from 2010 to 2020 (from US$63.5 billion to US$130 billion), while total IDM sales only increased by 30% during the same period, from US$204.3 billion in 2010 to US$265.7 billion in 2020, as shown below:

In 2002, sales of fabless semiconductor companies accounted for only 13% of the total IC market. As the memory market surged in 2017 and 2018, fabless companies' share remained small. However, as the memory market weakened significantly last year, this situation reversed, and fabless' share of the total semiconductor market increased by 3.9 percentage points to 29.7% in 2019.

IC Insights believes that sales of fabless companies are expected to grow 22% this year, with AMD achieving $2.8 billion in sales growth, while IDM IC sales will only grow 6%.

IC Insights analysis shows that this year, the proportion of total global market sales by fabless companies will hit a record high of 32.9%.