Published: 12 April 2023
R&D intensity — a firm’s R&D expenditure as a percentage of its total revenue — is a metric used by R&D leaders to gauge an organization’s investment in innovation. This report reviews R&D intensity trends from 2017 to 2021 for semiconductor vendors, foundries and wafer fabrication equipment firms.
Average R&D intensity for all our industry cohorts — semiconductor vendors, foundries and wafer fabrication firms — remained relatively steady over the period of 2017 to 2021, despite growing R&D expenditures. This reflects the robust revenue growth for these firms across this period.
There were variations in the average R&D intensity based on the type of semiconductor firm. Fabless firms had the highest R&D intensity across all our industry cohorts, likely due to the value-additive nature of chip design in the entire fabrication process.
The top five fabless semiconductor vendors by market share reported an average R&D intensity of 19.1%
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