Power-management ICs
Reflecting the worldwide economic recession, the semiconductor industry last year showed its first revenue drop since 2000. However, although total semiconductor-industry revenue for 2008 declined by 5.4% to $255 billion, the market for power-management ICs grew 1% from $8411 million to $8473 million.
By Margery Conner, Technical Editor -- EDN, October 22, 2009
Reflecting the worldwide economic recession, the semiconductor industry last year showed its first revenue drop since 2000. However, although total semiconductor-industry revenue for 2008 declined by 5.4% to $255 billion, the market for power-management ICs grew 1% from $8411 million to $8473 million. Compare this result with the analog-semiconductor segment, including converters and amplifiers, which was flat. Revenue for ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) and ASSPs (application-specific standard products) declined 2%, as did revenue for microcontrollers. The voltage-regulator segment has historically outpaced all other analog-IC segments, and, in 2008, it was again a relative bright spot in the semiconductor industry.
The top 10 companies haven't changed since last year (Table 1), but interesting things occurred in the power-management-IC market. For example, first-ranked Texas Instruments, fourth-ranked Linear Technology, fifth-ranked On Semiconductor, and seventh-ranked Intersil grew faster than the market.
The growth area in power-management ICs for the year was infrastructure, such as large computers, communications servers, and industrial applications. Infrastructure applications are feeling both economic pressure from the threat of rising energy prices and regulatory pressure for environmental issues to more efficiently use power. Consumer markets, on the other hand, which always are under the thumb of competitive downward-pricing moves, faced the double whammy of the worldwide economic recession.
Steve Ohr, research director for analog and power semiconductors at Gartner, forecasts that those power-management ICs that target high-current and high-efficiency markets should continue to do well, whereas low-efficiency linear regulators will find less of a market and lower margins. Ohr sees unit growth at a compound annual growth rate of 8 to 15%, depending on the type of device.
