New Delhi, Feb 3 (IANS): Amid global chip shortage, top 10 semiconductors buyers increased their chip spending by 25.2 per cent and accounted for 42.1 per cent of the total market, a new Gartner report said on Thursday.

Apple remained at the top of the semiconductor spending customer ranking in 2021, increasing its spending on memory by 36.8 per cent and on non-memory chips by 20.2 per cent in 2021.

However, it decreased its demand for computing micro processing units (MPUs) due to the shift to its own in-house-designed application processors, according to the report.

Samsung Electronics increased its memory spending by 34.1 per cent and non-memory chip spending by 23.9 per cent in 2021.

The increase of memory spending was the result of not just a rise of memory price, but also Samsung's growth in its target electronic equipment markets, especially the smartphone and solid-state drive (SSD) markets.

"Semiconductor vendors shipped more chips in 2021, but the OEMs' demand was far stronger than the vendors' production capacity," said Masatsune Yamaji, research director at Gartner.

The semiconductor shortage prevented OEMs from increasing production not just of vehicles but also various electronic equipment types, including smartphones and video game consoles.

The average selling prices (ASPs) of semiconductor chips, such as microcontroller units, general-purpose logic integrated circuits (ICs), and a wide variety of application-specific semiconductors, increased by 15 per cent or more in 2021.

"The semiconductor shortage also accelerated OEMs' double booking and panic buying, causing a huge spike in their semiconductor spending," said Yamaji.