Blue Ocean

Global leading mobile semiconductor chipmakers are betting their future on automotive semiconductors.
Global leading mobile semiconductor chipmakers are betting their future on automotive semiconductors.

 

Global leading mobile semiconductor chipmakers are moving beyond the smartphone semiconductor market to a “gold rush” in the market of connected cars including autonomous vehicles. This is because they are betting their future on automotive semiconductors as smart cars whose performances are equivalent to those of hundreds of PCs have become a blue ocean, and it is because of its survival in automotive semiconductors.

According to industry sources on January 30, Maxim Integrated, a global company focused on mobile semiconductors such as power management integrated circuits (PMICs) for smart phones, is substantially increasing its portion of semiconductors for automobiles. In 2015, its sales of automotive semiconductors accounted for only 13% of total sales, but grew nearly 20% last year.

Qualcomm, which is already a dominant leader in the mobile semiconductor segment, took over NXP Semiconductors, the No. 1 automotive semiconductor company in the Netherlands for $ 39 billion in October last year. Intel stuck to supplying mobile APs to a market even though it is a market of mid- and low-priced smartphones. But Intel shut down its smartphone semiconductor business and is now focusing on IoT-related business such as 'Go,' a platform for autonomous vehicles. These moves show the change of the game.  

One complete car contains about 200 semiconductors, including memory and non-memory semiconductors and micro-controller units (MCUs). One smartphone is loaded with about 100 semiconductors. The addition of smart functions such as an autonomous driving function will require more than 10 to 20 times stronger computing power than semiconductors used in conventional automobiles.

Gartner, a global information technology (IT) researcher, forecast that the semiconductor market for automotive electronics will swell 6% to US$34.289 billion this year and 7% US$36.8 billion in 2018. On the other hand, the semiconductor market for smart phones is sluggish.

At the same time, a war for putting semiconductors into a single semiconductor chip is brewing. Now, if roughly 200 semiconductor chips functioning in vehicles are produced by means of different coding, a process of integrating several complex functions into one chip is gaining in importance.

 

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