EDA Consortium: the Market Statistics Service
By Robert Gardner, Executive Director, EDAC -- EDN, January 18, 2007
I'd like to shine some light on EDAC's MSS (Market Statistics Service) and talk about the value it provides. EDAC created the MSS more than 10 years ago to give industry members timely information about EDA revenue by market segment. The MSS releases the top-line industry-revenue numbers to the public each quarter, and paying subscribers receive breakdowns by more detailed product segments. The service is available for purchase from EDAC, with discounts for consortium members and companies that report their own data.
Although some have compared the MSS report with the Gartner/Dataquest report, it actually serves a different purpose. The Gartner/Dataquest report was perhaps the best-known and most detailed source of market numbers in EDA, providing market-share numbers and segment-growth forecasts. Gartner/Dataquest, however, published only annual numbers. The EDAC MSS report focuses on providing a quarterly snapshot of EDA revenue by product categories and region, offering a timely barometer of the industry.
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The MSS has reported SIP (semiconductor-intellectual-property) data as a separate category since 1997, so it isn't a new addition. From 1997 to 2004, the MSS SIP category grew from having two subcategories to six subcategories. In addition, EDAC's quarterly press announcements publicly broke out SIP market-segment revenue. As IP (design reuse) became an increasing part of both EDA customers' speeding their designs to market and the product lines of many EDA companies, it made sense for EDAC to review the SIP-category reporting. In 2004, EDAC announced its work with the VSIA (Virtual Socket Initiative Alliance) to define approximately 40 additional SIP-product subcategories for the MSS. When making this decision, EDAC consulted with the VSIA to determine reasonable SIP-product subcategories. We also continued to reach out to IP companies to report their revenue numbers to EDAC. IP companies have since joined EDAC, and two of their leaders have joined our board: John Bourgoin, president and chief executive officer of MIPS Technology, and Sanjay Srivastava, president and chief executive officer of Denali Software. Another change that took place is that, in October 2005, EDAC announced its decision to include the publicly available numbers of nonreporting IP companies. EDAC includes all available market data to give the best picture of what's happening in the SIP-product segments. EDAC separately breaks out the nonreporting IP companies in the report so that a recipient of the report can exclude them from analysis if he or she wishes.
The inclusion of IP data does, of course, change the overall revenue that the MSS reports, but recipients of the report still get the full breakdown by product segment. The process is transparent, and any company that doesn't wish to include IP in its own internal analysis of the market can remove it.
To ensure the integrity of reporting, individual companies report their revenue—divided into the established product segments—to audit company PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The audit company then reports total revenue by product segment, as well as by region.
Like any other report about a dynamic market, this report's results are approximate. New companies or segment reporting can create year-over-year comparison issues in the data. EDAC handles these issues by providing complete listings of all companies included in each segment's numbers. Each user of the report has complete information, so they can judge how best to use the data.
The MSS is a great service that provides useful data at an affordable price. The quarterly release of revenue breakdown by major category (computer-aided engineering, pc boards and multichip modules, IC physical design and verification, and SIP) is only a small piece of the entire report. If you have interest in EDA-market data, EDAC encourages you to examine the full report.
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Check out my response to Bob on my Blog: "Between the Lines"
Michael Santarini - 2007-19-1 16:00:00 PST
