Global sales were $439 billion in 2020, according to data
from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a trade group that
represents most US chipmakers along with many international firms. The group
said sales from US chipmakers were about $208 billion, or about 47 percent of
the total.
Chip sales into the United States were $94.15 billion up
19.8 percent from the previous year.
Falan Yinug, SIA's director of industry statistics and
economic policy, said much of the rise in US purchasing was driven by high-end
memory chips used in applications such as data centers.
American tech companies such as Amazon.com, Microsoft and
Alphabet's Google all saw dramatic rises in the use of cloud computing over the
course of 2020 as businesses adapted to working from home.
While US-based companies represented nearly half of
semiconductor sales, they represented only about 12 percent of chip
manufacturing capacity in 2020. That is down from 37 percent in 1990, as most
US companies now source their chips from factories in Asia.
John Neuffer, president and chief executive of the industry
group, said legislation passed last year to provide incentives to chip
factories in the United States could help change that figure this year. The law
could provide funding to US companies such as Intel or GlobalFoundries, as well
as foreign firms such as Samsung Electronics or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Company.
"Over the next 10 years, semiconductor manufacturing is
going to grow 56 percent," Neuffer said. "We want to make sure we're
getting a bigger piece of the manufacturing pie."