Semiconductor industry

The semiconductor industry is the aggregate of companies engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductors and semiconductor devices, such as transistors and integrated circuits. Its roots can be traced to the invention of the transistor by Shockley, Brattain, and Bardeen at Bell Labs in 1948. Bell Labs licensed the technology for $25,000, and soon many companies, including Motorola (1952), Schockley Semiconductor (1955), Sylvania, Centralab, Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments were making transistors. In 1958 Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild independently invented the Integrated Circuit, a method of producing multiple transistors on a single "chip" of Semiconductor material. This kicked off a number of rapid advances in fabrication technology leading to the exponential growth in semiconductor device production, known as Moore's law that has persisted over the past six or so decades. The industry's annual semiconductor sales revenue has since grown to over $481 billion, as of 2018.
In 2010, the semiconductor industry had the highest intensity of Research & Development in the EU and ranked second after Biotechnology in the EU, United States and Japan combined.
The semiconductor industry is in turn the driving force behind the wider electronics industry, with annual power electronics sales of £135 billion ($216 billion) as of 2011, annual consumer electronics sales expected to reach $2.9 trillion by 2020, tech industry sales expected to reach $5 trillion in 2019, and e-commerce with over $29 trillion in 2017. In 2019, 32.4% of the semiconductor market segment was for networks and communications devices.
In 2021, the sales of semiconductors reached a record $555.9 billion, up 26.2%, with sales in China reaching $192.5 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. A record 1.15 trillion semiconductor units were shipped in the calendar year. The semiconductor industry is projected to reach $726.73 billion by 2027.
The global semiconductor industry is dominated by companies from the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands, with Israel and Germany having significant presence in the field.
Unique features of the industry include continuous growth but in a cyclical pattern with high volatility. While the current 20-year annual average growth of the semiconductor industry is on the order of 13%, this has been accompanied by equally above-average market volatility, which can lead to significant if not dramatic cyclical swings. This has required the need for high degrees of flexibility and innovation in order to constantly adjust to the rapid pace of change in the market as many products embedding semiconductor devices often have a very short life cycle.
At the same time, the rate of constant price-performance improvement in the semiconductor industry is staggering. As a consequence, changes in the semiconductor market not only occur extremely rapidly but also anticipate changes in industries evolving at a slower pace. The semiconductor industry is widely recognized as a key driver and technology enabler for the whole electronics value chain.
Prior to the 1980s, the semiconductor industry was vertically integrated. Semiconductor companies both designed and manufactured chips in their own facilities. In many cases, this included inventing new processes, refining and purifying source chemicals and silicon wafers, and even manufacturing equipment, like furnaces, lithography tools and etchers. These companies also carried out the assembly and testing of their chips. Over time, many of these functions were outsourced, such that today semiconductor manufacturers rely on a complex supply chain to provide wafers, high purity source chemicals, and processing equipment. Further, starting with LSI in 1969, the industry has seen the emergence of Fabless Semiconductor Companies that focus solely on chip design and rely on other companies to manufacture their designs. Initially, these other companies were integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), companies that also designed and manufactured their own products, and thus were often competitors of the Fabless companies. But, by the mid-1980's TSMC and UMC emerged as foundries, specializing solely in the manufacture of other companies' designs.
Today, much of the industry is based on the foundry model, which consists of semiconductor fabrication plants (foundries) and integrated circuit design operations, each belonging to separate companies or subsidiaries. Some companies, known as integrated device manufacturers, both design and manufacture semiconductors. The foundry model has resulted in consolidation among foundries. As of 2021, only three firms are able to manufacture the most advanced semiconductors: TSMC of Taiwan, Samsung of South Korea, and Intel of the United States. Part of this is due to the high capital costs of building foundries. TSMC's latest factory, capable of fabricating 3 nm process semiconductors and completed in 2020, cost $19.5 billion.
Intel is considering outsourcing some production to TSMC. It currently can only produce 10 nm semiconductors, while TSMC and Samsung can both produce 5 nm. GlobalFoundries, an American-headquartered firm, uses a 12 nm process for its most advanced chips due to the rapidly increasing development costs of smaller process nodes.
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Manufacturers headquartered in the following places are the sales leaders in the pure-play foundry, IDM (integrated device manufacturing), fabless manufacturing and OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing) sectors of the industry.
Manufacturers headquartered in the United States have fabrication plants across the world, including over 50% in the Americas, 39% in the Asia-Pacific region (including 9% in Japan), and 9% in Europe.