2024 and 2025 should bring more semiconductor sales than ever before

The semiconductor market is recovering from the decline in 2023. Market researcher Gartner is forecasting growth of 18.8% for 2024: chip companies are expected to generate USD 629.8 billion from the sale of semiconductors. In 2025, this figure is expected to rise by a further 13.8 percent to 716.7 billion.

In 2023, the figure was 530 billion – the industry's previous record was set in 2021 and 2022 with just under 600 billion US dollars each, when the whole world was buying notebooks, among other things. One year later, the market slumped unexpectedly, partly due to the Russian attack on Ukraine and the economic recession.

Jahresumsatz mit Halbleitern (in Milliarden US-Dollar, Quelle: Gartner)
Jahr	2023	2024	2025
Umsatz	530	629,8	716.,7
Wachstum	-11,7 %	+18,8 %	+13,8 %

AI moves the semiconductor world

The main driver is artificial intelligence. Hyperscalers are spending billions and billions of US dollars to develop the most complex AI algorithms. According to Gartner, this is why sales of GPUs in particular are increasing: Nvidia in particular still refers to its AI accelerators as GPUs, even though they are no longer traditional graphics cards and in some cases have significantly reduced 3D rendering.

GPUs are expected to generate 51 billion US dollars in 2025, 27% more than in 2024. This only refers to the costs for the pure graphics chips that chip contract manufacturers such as TSMC call up. The analysts state memory sales separately; otherwise, Nvidia's sales alone would exceed this figure.

Nvidia charges far more than 20,000 US dollars for a finished AI accelerator of the current Hopper and Blackwell generations. Added to this are the costs for the remaining server components.

Memory is growing particularly strongly

The demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in particular is increasing immensely because AMD, Nvidia and other manufacturers are using it as the fastest memory option on their AI accelerators. HBM sales are expected to increase by 284% to USD 12.3 billion in 2024 and by a further 70% to USD 21 billion in 2025.

If all DRAM is included, including DDR5 and DDR4 components for memory bars, sales are expected to reach USD 90.1 billion in 2024 and USD 115.6 billion in 2025.

Production restrictions have led to higher, profitable prices for both DRAM and NAND flash components, such as for SSDs. In the case of NAND flash, price increases of 60 percent are particularly noticeable after a downturn. Their turnover is expected to rise to a good 67 billion US dollars in 2024 and to more than 75 billion in 2025.

Adding up all memory chips, including more exotic types than DRAM and NAND flash, memory is expected to generate sales of USD 196.3 billion in 2025 –, accounting for a good 27 percent of total global sales of semiconductors.

(mma)