AMD on fast track for big revenue growth while Intel risks falling behind

What you need to know

• IC Insights forecasts that the semiconductor market will increase 23% this year.
• AMD is forecast to have a revenue increase of 65%, which is the highest forecast of any company in the industry.
• Intel is expected to have a negative revenue increase of –1%.

The global chip shortage continues, but the semiconductor market is expected to have a big year. IC Insights recently updated its 2021 forecast for semiconductor sales. The market is expected to increase 23% overall as a result of a 20% increase in semiconductor unit shipments and a 3% increase in total semiconductor average selling price (ASP). If this occurs, it will be the largest gain in the global semiconductor industry since 2010. In that year, semiconductor sales went up 34%.

It's worth noting that the 34% sales increase in 2010 followed the global recession of 2008 and 2009. The forecasted 23% growth in the industry comes after the worst of the global chip shortage affected CPU and GPU sales in 2020.

AMD leads the pack with forecasted revenue growth of 65%. MediaTek (60%), NVIDIA (54%), Qualcomm (51%), and SMIC (39%) round out the top five.

While several tech giants and the semiconductor industry as a whole are expected to increase in terms of revenue growth, IC Insights predicts Intel's revenue growth to be –1%. It's worth noting that negative revenue growth does not indicate poor gross revenue. Negative revenue growth means that a company made less revenue than the preceding year. Intel's projected revenue for 2021 is $77 billion, which is several times larger than AMD's projected revenue of $15 billion.