In this article we are going to list the 15 largest electronics companies in the world.
The electronics industry, especially when compared to other classic established industries such as coal, oil and gas, FMCG and various other industries, is relatively a much newer industry. The industry was only established in the 20th century and has grown exponentially over the last few decades. It is also by far one of the biggest industries in the world, with several different sectors including the semiconductor industry, which is basically the driving force of the entire electronics industry, and in 2018, had sales of over $481 billion at a global level.
The industry itself is worth trillions of dollars and is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. We do distinguish it from other similar industries such as the ecommerce industry which is slightly different and while the two are related and linked, they are not the same. To learn more about ecommerce industries, you might want to consider taking a look at the largest ecommerce companies in the world. Nowadays, even if you look around you, electronics have dominated our life like perhaps nothing else. And a lot of this has to do with the advancements in technology made in the last several decades which have literally completely changed the industry and our lives, without any exaggeration at all. While electronic products initially were bulky, heavy, unaesthetic, and extremely expensive, and hence not suitable for common purposes. The simplest of devices with specifications that would make you wonder how anything was even accomplished on them would cost thousands of dollars. A 5 MB hard disk was huge and weighed nearly a ton, taking up 16 square feet of space. The cost of using this device ran up to $35,000 annually, which is absolutely staggering. Today, 1 TB hard drives will cost you a lot less than $100. SSDs might be slightly more expensive but still not even close to the astronomical cost of days gone by. Even if we talk about televisions, you can now get a 55 inch 4k TV for a little over $500 from the biggest brands, which again is immense. If you told anyone in the 60s that you would have such incredible resolution available, they would have either laughed at you or been really, really progressive.
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Smartphones are perhaps however, the best example to show the growth of the electronics industry. A handheld device now has more power than most laptops did less than a decade ago and is equipped with cameras that have completely made the digital camera industry go obsolete. And while a very small percentage of the population owned a smartphone, only perhaps the super rich, due to low costs and several options, smartphones are now the most common type of phone and have seen the establishment of a new industry and its subsequent explosion in growth when apps for phones started to be created. The biggest apps earn tens of millions of dollars in revenue. All this serves to show how intrinsically so many other industries are linked to the electronics industry and its growth, and how the growth of one sector impacts everything else as well.
Of course, like more or less every single industry in the world bar a few, the electronics industry has also been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic has infected over 57 million people while causing nearly 1.4 million deaths and resulted in the lockdown of billions of people across the world, which saw many businesses shut down and some even having to close permanently. This led to many production facilities of electronic products also shutting down as the workforce across the globe has been unavailable. On the other hand, major ecommerce companies have been able to provide non-essential items including electronics, which have also seen an increase in demand as many people who are locked down resort to electronics products to while away the time while the world attempts to fight off the pandemic. Now that there are potentially successful vaccines by various pharma companies, some of which are among the biggest biotech companies in the world, maybe things will return to normal soon.
The largest electronics companies in the world are some of the most recognizable names in the world and have some of the world’s most popular products. In fact, one you go through the list, look around your house; you might actually find a lot of products of these companies in your house, I know I did. Together, these companies have over $950 billion in revenue, over a trillion dollars in assets and provide direct employment to nearly 3 million people. We have used revenues, profits, assets and employees and given higher weightage to the latter two metrics, to calculate our rankings. The data has been taken by the Fortune 500 Global List for 2020 and we have only taken the electronics companies appearing there. So let’s take a look at the companies providing our favorite products, without with our lives wouldn’t have as much color, starting with number 15:
15. Haier Smart Home
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 29,060
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 1,188
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 26,911
Total employees: 99,757
Haier Smart Home is engaged in, as the name suggests, in the production of a wide variety of home appliances and is considered to be the most valuable IoT ecosystem brand in the world with a value of $16.3 billion.
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14. Toshiba
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 31,179
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): -1,054
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 31,308
Total employees: 125,648
Toshiba recently let go of its involvement in the laptops industry, but is still a company in other aspects of the electronics industry including home appliances and semiconductors.
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13. LG Electronics
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 53,464
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 27
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 38,796
Total employees: 74,000
LG is one of two South Korean companies on this list, and operates various subsidiaries in 80 countries.
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12. Gree Electric Appliances
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 29,024
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 3,574
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 40,624
Total employees: 88,846
Gree is a Chinese manufacturer of appliances and is actually the largest air conditioner manufacturer in the entire world, and has a strong presence in dozens of companies across the world.
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11. Pegatron
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 44,207
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 625
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 19,033
Total employees: 172,995
Pegatron is a Taiwanese electronics giant, and was only founded 13 years ago but has become a giant, producing many electronics products such as laptops, notebooks, motherboards and hand held devices.
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10. China Electronics
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 32,447
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 138
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 47,019
Total employees: 138,603
The state owned company is one of the largest telecom companies in China, engaged in both civilian and military applications.
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9. Schneider Electric
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 30,397
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 2,701
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 50,511
Total employees: 135,307
Schneider Electric is one of the biggest companies in France by market cap and provides both energy as well as automaton digital solutions to households as well as industries.
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8. Midea Group
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 40,440
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 3,505
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 43,349
Total employees: 134,897
Midea is a Chinese electric appliance manufacturer and has around 200 subsidiaries and 60 branches to manage its vast business.
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7. Mitsubishi Electric
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 41,045
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 2,040
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 40,805
Total employees: 146,518
Mitsubishi, founded in 1870, is 150 years old and engaged in the production of many electronic household appliances such as air conditioners in addition to making semiconductors, digital signage and factory automation products.
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6. Honeywell International (NYSE:HON)
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 36,709
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 6,143
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 58,679
Total employees: 113,000
Honeywell is one of the biggest players in the smart home industry and has many exciting products in what is a relatively newer industry within the already recent electronics industry.
5. Panasonic
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 68,897
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 2,076
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 57,542
Total employees: 259,385
While founded over a century ago as a lightbulb manufacturer in Japan, the company grew to become an electronics giant and is known for its rechargeable batteries, avionic systems, and many other products including televisions, speakers and home theater systems.
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4. Sony (NYSE:SNE)
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 75,972
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 5,355
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 213,189
Total employees: 111,700
Sony has been a huge presence in the electronics scene, and is one of the few foreign electronics companies to be listed in the US as well. Not only is it one of the leading television manufacturers and a leader in the semiconductor industry, it is also a dominant leader in the gaming consoles industry with its PlayStation series, and the PlayStation 5 which has released recently, has seen some of the biggest hype regarding any product recently, showcasing the strength of the company and its products.
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3. Hitachi
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 80,639
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 806
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 91,886
Total employees: 301,056
Hitachi is one of the many Japanese companies among the largest electronics companies in the world, and is headquartered in Tokyo. It is one of the oldest companies in this list because as we mentioned earlier, the electronics industry is quite recent. Hitachi was founded 110 years ago in 1910 and operates 10 major business segments.
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2. Hon Hai Precision Industry
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 172,689
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 3,731
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 110,790
Total employees: 757,404
One of the largest employers in the world, Hon Hai was founded 46 years ago in 1974 and has the highest number of employees of any electronics company. The Taiwanese company is the manufacturer of many international giants and their products including iPhones, iPads, Kindle, Blackberry, PS3, Wii U and the Xbox gaming console. It has been accused of paying extremely low wages, resulting in a series of employee suicides.
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2. Samsung Electronics
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 197,705
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 18,543
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 304,908
Total employees: 287,439
Missing out on the top position is Samsung, which is one of the biggest success stories from South Korea. It is the biggest part of the Samsung Group conglomerate, and contributed around 70% of the group’s revenue in 2012. With nearly 290,000 employees, the company has production facilities and marketing networks in 70 countries across the globe. It is competitive in the mobile phone industry and has engaged in healthy competition with Apple with its flagship phones while also being a lead in television production, among many other products.
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1. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Total revenue in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 260,174
Total profit in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 55,256
Total assets in 2019 (in millions of dollars): 338,516
Total employees: 137,000
Easily topping the list of the 5 largest electronics companies in the world is Apple, which is also the only company here which has crossed $200 billion in revenue and by quite a margin as well. It also has the highest profits by far, which more than cover up the fact that revenues have actually dropped 2% as compared to the previous year. The biggest products Apple offers includes its iPhone, iPads and iMac computers and laptops, all of which are extremely expensive and hence, have resulted in the high margins that you can see here. It is also considered one of the more controversial companies in the world right now, and just recently was in the news for paying out a settlement for deliberately slowing down its older models to entire, or rather force, buyers to buy the newer versions. The settlement was worth $113 million. It is also the only company in the world apart from Aramco to cross $2 trillion in market cap.
See also 10 Best Electrical Engineering Companies to Work for and 25 Countries Where Samsung’s Galaxy Smartphones Have The Largest Market Share
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Disclosure: No positions. 15 Largest Electronics Companies in the World is originally published on Insider Monkey.
