Taiwan's Top 10 chip design houses reported a fresh record high in 2022 as combined revenue hit NT$959.02 billion (US$32.14 billion), up 3.9 percent year-on-year.
It was the fourth consecutive record high for the sector, beating the NT$934.1 billion reached in 2021, but far short of that year's sharp 51.6 percent growth. Revenue growth in 2022 slowed as the pandemic eased and people reined in spending on PCs, smartphones, flat screen TVs and other electronic devices.
Chip designers create the intricate blueprint of transistors and other components on a semiconductor chip that make it work. The segment is strong in Taiwan due to the island's chip foundry giants, TSMC and UMC, which specialize in manufacturing chips based on those blueprints.
Revenue among Taiwan's Top 10 chip designers grew 296.4 percent between 2012 and 2022, for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.9 percent each year. It's one of the hottest segments of Taiwan's semiconductor industry.
The leader of Taiwan's Top 10 chip design firms is smartphone chip giant MediaTek Inc., which has led Taiwan's designers since before 2012. The biggest change in the Top 10 last year was Realtek Semiconductor Corp., the networking chip designer, taking over second place from Novatek Microelectronics Corp., which had held second place for over a decade.
TABLE: Taiwan's Top 10 Chip Design Firms in 2022
Companies | Rank | 2022 Revenue | Change YoY | 2021 Revenue | 2021 Rank |
MediaTek | 1 | NT$548.80 billion | 11.2% | NT$493.4 billion | 1 |
Realtek | 2 | NT$111.79billion | 6.0% | NT$105.5 billion | 3 |
Novatek | 3 | NT$109.96 billion | -18.8% | NT$135.4 billion | 2 |
Phison | 4 | NT$60.26 billion | -3.7% | NT$62.6 billion | 4 |
Global Unichip | 5 | NT$24.04 billion | 59.1% | NT$15.1 billion | 13 |
Silergy | 6 | NT$23.60 billion | 9.8% | NT$21.5billion | 10 |
Raydium | 7 | NT$22.82 billion | -8.1% | NT$24.8 billion | 5 |
Parade | 8 | NT$20.05 billion | 0.3% | NT$20.0 billion | 11 |
Fitipower | 9 | NT$19.68 billion | -13.9% | NT$22.9 billion | 7 |
Sitronix | 10 | NT$18.03 billion | -19.0% | NT$22.3 billion | 8 |
Total | | NT$959.02 billion | 3.9% | | |
Novatek, Raydium, Fitipower and Sitronix all lost ground among the Top 10 last year due to weak end demand, particularly in flat screen TVs, computer monitors and smartphone displays. They all count on display-related demand for a portion of their revenue.
To better put MediaTek into perspective, the company is so big, it takes the combined revenue of the next 27 chip design houses in Taiwan to top MediaTek's. Among the Top 10, MediaTek's revenue accounts for 57 percent combined revenue.
In terms of growth, Global Unichip Corp. (GUC), a contract chip design specialist, beat out the rest of the Top 10 last year with 59.1 percent year-on-year growth to NT$24.04 billion, propelling it to 5th place from 13th in 2021. GUC helps other firms, tech or non-tech, design new chips and/or ready them for production at Taiwan's foundries.
Demand for help designing new chips has brought a lot of business to Taiwan's contract chip designers, which also include Alchip Technologies, Ltd. (12th place last year) and Faraday Technology Corp. (13th place).
From the world's cloud giants (Amazon, Google, Alibaba) to auto makers and others, a number of multinationals have tapped Taiwan's contract chip designers to help them partly or fully design new chips.
Alchip's revenue grew 31.5 percent last year to NT$13.71 billion, while Faraday's rose 61.6 percent to NT$13.07 billion.
The Top 10 list only includes Taiwan companies listed on the local stock exchange, which leaves out a few big Taiwan chip designers: U.S.-listed Himax Technologies, Inc. and Silicon Motion Technology Corp.
Had they been included, Himax would have ranked 5th among the Top 10 with around NT$46.16 billion in revenue, and Silicon Motion would have ranked 6th, with around NT$27.52 billion. Both companies reported 2022 revenue in U.S. dollars, and a full-year average exchange rate was used for the New Taiwan dollar (NT$) conversion.
Source: All 2022 revenue figures are from monthly sales totals for 2022 filed by each company to The Taiwan Stock Exchange.