Gartner forecast global semiconductor revenue would decrease 3.6 per cent to $596 billion in 2023, due in part to a worsening economic outlook in the DRAM sector which it stated was oversupplied from now until end-September 2023.

The research company’s analysts foresee DRAM revenue dropping 2.6 per cent to $90.5 billion this year, with a decrease of 18 per cent in 2023.

Analysts noted global semiconductor revenue was projected to grow 4 per cent to $618 billion in 2022.

They surmised market weakness in consumer markets was due to a decline in disposable income caused by inflation and interest rates, with any spare cash being spent on areas including travel, leisure and entertainment rather than technology.

B2B enterprise markets including networking, compute, industrial, medical and commercial transportation, have been resilient to-date despite geopolitical concerns and a looming macroeconomic slowdown.

Richard Gordon, practice VP at Gartner, stated the strength in the enterprise sector was due to investments by corporations to bolster their infrastructure to support work-from-home scenarios, business expansion plans and ongoing digitalisation strategies.

He noted industrial, telecom infrastructure and data centre markets, among others, “will be less impacted by consumer sentiment and spending in the short term”.