Reflecting the increased demand for telecommunications amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Apple remained the world’s largest buyer of semiconductor chips in 2020 for the second year straight, industry data showed on February 10.

According to global research and consulting firm Gartner, Apple spent $53.6 billion on chips, up 24 per cent from 2019, and thus accounted for 11.9 per cent of the worldwide market.

Next was South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, which spent $36.4 billion, up 20.4 per cent year-on-year.

Gartner research director Masatsune Yamaji said: “Two major factors impacted the top OEMs’ semiconductor spending in 2020 – the Covid-19 pandemic and the political conflict between the US and China.

“The pandemic weakened the demand for 5G smartphones and disrupted vehicle production, but drove the demand for mobile PCs and video games, as well as the investment in cloud data centres through 2020.

“Furthermore, a rise in memory prices in 2020 resulted in increased OEM chip spending through the year.”

Boosting Apple’s chip demand was the continued success of AirPods, special demand for Mac computers and iPads, and increasing NAND flash consumption, Yamaji said.

For Samsung, one of the positive factors was the weakened competition from Huawei due to the US’ trade restrictions on the Chinese firm.

Samsung also benefited from Covid-19 trends such as working from home and e-learning, which drove demand for PCs and cloud servers, in which many solid-state drives from Samsung are used, Yamaji said.

Among the top 10 companies, Xiaomi marked the sharpest increase, up 26 per cent year-on-year, partly driven by online sales and also benefiting from Huawei’s sanctions impact.

THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK