Telecom Lead India: Chipmaker Qualcomm dominates the
overall core semiconductor components market with over one-quarter of total
market revenues in 2011, according to ABI Research.
Qualcomm is also the best-placed company to take
advantage of the growing integrated solutions market, as demonstrated by the
success of its Snapdragon portfolio of products.
There are many other suppliers, such as Broadcom and
ST-Ericsson, who are racing to compete in this section of the market, e.g.
ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor and its recent success with a number of handsets
suppliers, including Samsung.
Revenues for core semiconductor components used in mobile
handsets, including platform ICs and wireless connectivity ICs will reach
almost $37 billion per annum in 2012.
The overall market for handset ICs is forecast to peak in
2014, reaching almost $40 billion. It is then expected to fall, as handset
shipment growth starts to stall and IC average selling prices continue to fall.
Expect even more fierce competition for sockets in the future.
The smartphone has offered many opportunities to
semiconductor vendors as it has largely been dominated by standalone IC
solutions. However, the market is transitioning to one of more integrated
solutions, particularly in the high growth, low- and mid-end tiers of the
market. This will mean less available sockets and therefore much stronger
competition for these in the future,” said Peter Cooney, practice director.
The research study reveals that the market has seen
strong growth from 2009 due to strong uptake of smartphones that augmented
growth for many components such as applications processors and Wi-Fi ICs.
I’d expect that Qualcomm will increase its market share
of the overall platform IC market over the next five years. This doesn’t mean
it will be a closed shop, however, and there is certainly room for two or three
other suppliers to have a long-term position in the market. Currently there are
a number of contenders that have an eye on second or third place, including
Broadcom, Intel, ST-Ericsson, NVIDIA, MediaTek, and Marvell,” Cooney added.
Chipset revenue from mobile devices up 20% to $35 billion in
2011
Revenue from chipsets designed for mobile devices has
gone up by more than 20 percent to $35 billion in 2011. The total
semiconductor market grew 2 percent last year.
