Technology
Chart: Here’s How 5 Tech Giants Make Their Billions
The Revenue Streams of the Five Largest Tech Companies
The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.
Last year, we published a chart showing that tech companies have displaced traditional blue chip companies like Exxon Mobil and Walmart as the most valuable companies in the world.
Here are the latest market valuations for those same five companies:
Rank | Company | Market Cap (Billions, as of May 11, 2017) | Primary Revenue Driver |
---|---|---|---|
#1 | Apple | $804 | Hardware |
#2 | Alphabet | $651 | Advertising |
#3 | Microsoft | $536 | Software |
#4 | Amazon | $455 | Online Retail |
#5 | $434 | Advertising | |
TOTAL | $2,880 |
Together, they are worth $2.9 trillion in market capitalization – and they combined in FY2016 for revenues of $555 billion with a $94 billion bottom line.
Bringing Home the Bacon?
Despite all being at the top of the stock market food chain, the companies are at very different stages.
In 2016, Apple experienced its first annual revenue decline since 2001, but the company brought home a profit equal to that of all other four companies combined.
On the other hand, Amazon is becoming a revenue machine with very little margin, while Facebook generates 5x more profit despite far smaller top line numbers.
Company | 2016 Revenue (Billions) | 2016 Net Income (Billions) | Margin |
---|---|---|---|
Apple | $216 | $46 | 21% |
Alphabet | $90 | $19 | 21% |
Microsoft | $85 | $17 | 20% |
Amazon | $136 | $2 | 2% |
$28 | $10 | 36% |
How They Make Their Billions
Each of these companies is pretty unique in how they generate revenue, though there is some overlap:
- Facebook and Alphabet each make the vast majority of their revenues from advertising (97% and 88%, respectively)
- Apple makes 63% of their revenue from the iPhone, and another 21% coming from the iPad and Mac lines
- Amazon makes 90% from its “Product” and “Media” categories, and 9% from AWS
- Microsoft is diverse: Office (28%), servers (22%), Xbox (11%), Windows (9%), ads (7%), Surface (5%), and other (18%)
Lastly, for fun, what if we added all these companies’ revenues together, and categorized them by source?
Category | 2016 Revenue (Millions) | % Total | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Hardware | $197,020 | 36% | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Xbox, Surface |
Online Retail | $122,205 | 22% | Amazon (Product and Media Categories) |
Advertising | $112,366 | 20% | Google, Facebook, YouTube, Bing ads |
Software | $31,692 | 6% | Office, Windows |
Cloud/Server | $31,396 | 6% | AWS, Microsoft Server, Azure |
Other | $60,177 | 11% | Consulting, other services (iTunes, Google Play), etc. |
$554,856 | 100% |
Note: this isn’t perfect. As an example, Amazon’s fast-growing advertising business gets lumped into their “Other” category.
Hardware, e-commerce, and and advertising make up 76% of all revenues.
Meanwhile, software isn’t the cash cow it used to be, but it does help serve as a means to an end for some companies. For example, Android doesn’t generate any revenue directly, but it does allow more users to buy apps in the Play Store and to search Google via their mobile devices. Likewise, Apple bundles in operating systems with each hardware purchase.
Technology
Ranked: Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue
Most of the 10 largest semiconductor foundries in the world, are headquartered in just three Asian countries, accounting for 90% of the entire industry’s revenue.

Ranked: Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue
They’re in our phones, cars, planes, and even fridges.
Semiconductor chips have become critical for the modern way of life, and the biggest semiconductor foundry companies rake in billions of dollars from widespread demand.
This chart shows the largest semiconductor foundry companies by their percentage of global revenues in Q1 2023, using data sourced from Trendforce.
Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue
At the top of the list and dwarfing every other company by revenue share is TSMC which earned 60% (or nearly $17 billion) of the entire industry’s revenue in Q1 2023.
Founded in 1987, TSMC is a pure-play foundry that has become Taiwan’s largest company and manufactures products for a host of clients including Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD.
Rank | Company | Country | Revenue (Q1 2023, USD) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | TSMC | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $16,735M |
2 | Samsung | 🇰🇷 South Korea | $3,446M |
3 | GlobalFoundries | 🇺🇸 US | $1,841M |
4 | UMC | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $1,784M |
5 | SMIC | 🇨🇳 China | $1,462M |
6 | HuaHong Group | 🇨🇳 China | $845M |
7 | Tower Semiconductor | 🇮🇱 Israel | $356M |
8 | PSMC | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $332M |
9 | VIS | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $269M |
10 | DB Hitek | 🇰🇷 South Korea | $234M |
Other | $556M | ||
Global Total | $27,860M |
Note: Revenue based on the following conversion rates: USD 1 = WON 1,276; USD 1 = NTD 30.4.
Well behind TSMC in foundry revenues is integrated device manufacturer Samsung, the biggest company in South Korea, which made $3.4 billion (12.4% of the industry’s revenue) from its semiconductor manufacturing business.
GlobalFoundries from the U.S., UMC from Taiwan and SMIC from China round out the top five, with each taking home around 6% of industry’s revenue share in Q1 2023. The former spun out from AMD’s manufacturing arm when the company went fabless in 2009.
Industry concentration is apparent in semiconductors. For example, the top 10 semiconductor foundry companies account for 98% of the entire industry’s revenue. Furthermore, 90% of the market is dominated by companies in just three Asian countries: Taiwan, South Korea, and China.
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