Worldwide microcontroller market share for 2011 saw a few changes take place among top suppliers. The most noticeable change was that of Atmel, which climbed up the rankings with an increase in microcontroller revenue of 25%, according to Databeans estimates.
Atmel is engaged in the growing touch screen controller market. While most of its revenue is contributed by sales to smartphone suppliers, there is a growing demand for touch screen technology in other consumer segments as well as the computer market. Overall competition in this market from Atmel, Microchip Technology and Infineon Technologies has become very close and is only separated by 0,8% between these competitors.
Renesas Electronics retained its healthy lead as the number one supplier in 2011, regardless of the difficulties it faced in the Thoku earthquake and tsunami. The company’s slight 3% loss year over year is the largest change in revenue since its merger with NEC in 2009.
In terms of individual market segments, the automotive market easily represents the single largest application for microcontrollers with nearly $6 billion in global sales estimated for 2012. That amount is 39% of the total 2012 microcontroller market. This segment is also slated to be one of the fastest growing overall with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9% until 2017.
The consumer market is also forecasted to grow at the same 9% CAGR over the next five years. The smartcards market is the second fastest growing market within microcontrollers specifically; however, it is the emerging touch screen controller market that has seen significant growth. This is due to inclusion of these new interface devices in smartphones, consumer devices, and commercial or industrial controls.
It is interesting to see how the microcontroller market share shifts when the smartcard segment is removed from the microcontroller revenue table. As can be seen in Table 2, a significant proportion of Freescale’s growth did not include smartcards, while the rest of the top 10 only moved a percentage point or two. This dynamic for analysing microcontroller share also allows Synaptics to make an appearance in the top 10 with a 1,8% share.
When the microcontroller market share is broken out a step further, even more information about the competitive landscape becomes apparent. Table 3 examines what the worldwide microcontroller market share looks like without either smartcards or automotive microcontroller revenue included. The obvious difference is that automotive applications are the driving force to keeping this market positive overall in 2011.
When market share is analysed in this regard, Atmel shows the largest amount of revenue growth. This can be attributed to the company’s success in the consumer market with its maXTouch controller business which is in over eight smartphone designs. Atmel’s business also added another foundry partner in 2011, MagnaChip, to work with TSMC and UMC, as well as its own fabs.
Cypress Semiconductor also made huge year over year gains in 2011 and doubled its market share in microcontrollers less smartcards and automotive. All of its revenue comes from mobile phone microcontrollers, in which it is the number 3 supplier.
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