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Commentary / Analysis

• Comparing Market Sizes and Forecasted Growth Rates for Systems, ICs (Monday Mar. 09, 2015)
  Total production value of electronic systems increased 5% in 2014 to $1,488 billion. Electronic system production is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2% from 2013-2018.
  
  
• NXP + Freescale Merger Set To Create Leading Vendor of Automotive Semiconductors in 2015; Renesas Was The Largest Vendor in 2014 (Friday Mar. 06, 2015)
  According to the latest analysis by Semicast Research, Renesas Electronics was the leading vendor of semiconductors to the OE automotive sector in 2014, ahead of Infineon Technologies. STMicroelectronics retained its position as third largest vendor, with Freescale fourth and NXP fifth.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Server Market Grew 4.8 Percent in Shipments, While Revenue Increased 2.2 Percent in Fourth Quarter of 2014 (Wednesday Mar. 04, 2015)
  In the fourth quarter of 2014, worldwide server shipments increased 4.8 percent year over year, while revenue grew 2.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Gartner, Inc. In all of 2014, worldwide server shipments grew 2.2 percent, and server revenue increased 0.8 percent.
  
  
• NXP CEO: 'Security, IoT, Cars' Drove Freescale Deal (Wednesday Mar. 04, 2015)
  One Freescale executive who appears to have secured his spot in the soon-to-be merged NXP is Geoff Lees, senior vice president and general manager, responsible for Freescale’s microcontroller business.
  
  
• Embedded Job Market Expands, But Boomers Feel the Squeeze (Tuesday Mar. 03, 2015)
  By almost any measure, the job market appears to be looking very good right now for embedded engineers. But not for everyone.
  
  
• Freescale-NXP Merger Leaves Fewer Viable Alternatives in Chip Market (Tuesday Mar. 03, 2015)
  The announced merger of Freescale Semiconductor Inc. and NXP Semiconductor for $11.8 billion has important implications from a buyer-side perspective.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Industry Posts Highest-Ever January Sales (Tuesday Mar. 03, 2015)
  SIA today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $28.5 billion for the month of January 2015, the industry’s highest-ever January total and an increase of 8.7 percent from January 2014 when sales were $26.3 billion.
  
  
• NXP, Freescale: Bigger Not Better (Monday Mar. 02, 2015)
  The proposed merger of NXP and Freescale creates a big company but not a substantially different one. With the exception of its size, the combined giant will have few new tools to ensure its survival in a consolidating chip industry.
  
  
• Freescale, Cisco, Ciena Give Nod to FD-SOI (Monday Mar. 02, 2015)
  Freescale, Cisco and Ciena have defied the general skepticism of fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) by revealing their own experience with the process technology, creating expectations that more companies might follow.
  
  
• Apple & Samsung No Longer Control Majority of Tablet Market (Thursday Feb. 26, 2015)
  Market share for top two tablet vendors Apple and Samsung fell to 43 percent as total shipment volume growth slowed to 6.6 percent in 2014.
  
  
• Samsung Wants Moore's Law End, Analyst Says (Tuesday Feb. 24, 2015)
  Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest smartphone maker, may be looking forward to the end of Moore’s Law as a way to gain a new competitive edge, according to Mehdi Hosseini, an analyst with Susquehanna International Group.
  
  
• TSMC to Start 10nm in 2017, Closing Gap with Intel (Tuesday Feb. 24, 2015)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest chip foundry, said that it expects to start 10 nanometer production in 2017, when it will have process technology matching that of industry leader Intel Corp.
  
  
• Top Semiconductor R&D Leaders Ranked for 2014 (Tuesday Feb. 24, 2015)
  More than any other industry, the semiconductor business is defined by rapid technological change. As a result, a constant and high level of investment in R&D is essential to the competitive positions of semiconductor suppliers.
  
  
• Smartphone and Automotive Display Revenue Swelled in 2014, as Demand for Other Small and Medium Display Categories Stalled, IHS Says (Monday Feb. 23, 2015)
  As smartphones continued to cannibalize product sales in other small and medium flat-panel-display (FPD) categories, automotive display revenues rose to become the second-highest growth category in 2014, according to IHS.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts January 2015 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.03 (Monday Feb. 23, 2015)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.31 billion in orders worldwide in January 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.03, according to the January EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Semiconductor Unit Shipments To Exceed One Trillion Devices in 2017 (Wednesday Feb. 18, 2015)
  Total semiconductor unit shipments (integrated circuits and opto-sensor-discrete, or O-S-D, devices) are forecast to continue their upward march through the current cyclical period and top one trillion units for the first time in 2017 according to IC Insights’ forecast
  
  
• Mortal Motorola (Tuesday Feb. 17, 2015)
  How did Motorola, a company that 15 years ago had a market capitalization of nearly $80 billion and 150,000 employees worldwide become the mere shadow of itself that it is today?
  
  
• Ex-Motorola Unit Freescale Semiconductor in sale talks (Friday Feb. 13, 2015)
  Freescale Semiconductor, the $11 billion tech company spun out of Motorola in 2004, is in sale talks, The Post has learned.
  
  
• Moore's Law Chips Confidence (Thursday Feb. 12, 2015)
  Only a fourth of semiconductor business leaders believe Moore's Law will continue for the foreseeable future in an otherwise upbeat survey conducted by KPMG.
  
  
• IoT Security: The Road Ahead (Tuesday Feb. 10, 2015)
  The Internet of Things will never be fully secure — nothing ever is. But an IoT security specialist at ARM outlined the road ahead in the wake of the company’s acquisition Monday of Offspark, a provider of one key piece of the puzzle.
  
  
• Market Dynamics, Technology Hurdles Reduce DRAM Bit Volume Growth (Tuesday Feb. 10, 2015)
  IC Insights’ recently released 2015 edition of The McClean Report shows that DRAM bit volume grew by an average of 67% per year from 1995-2005. In the 10 years since then, however, bit volume growth has averaged 43% per year.
  
  
• Silicon Wafer Shipments Reach Record Levels in 2014 (Tuesday Feb. 10, 2015)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased 11 percent in 2014 when compared to 2013 area shipments according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its year-end analysis of the silicon wafer industry. However, worldwide silicon revenues increased by just 1 percent in 2014 compared to 2013.
  
  
• TSMC Plans to Invest $16 Billion More in Taiwan Site (Monday Feb. 09, 2015)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest chip foundry, said in a press statement that it plans to invest an additional NT$500 billion ($15.9 billion) as part of an expansion on the site of an existing fab in Taiwan.
  
  
• Open-Silicon: "No Software Runs Without Hardware" (Monday Feb. 09, 2015)
  As the valuation of high-tech companies goes increasingly lopsided — disproportionately favoring the software business — the obvious question is: Who nowadays is willing to get their hands dirty designing high-cost, low-margin hardware?
  
  
• ARM Cores Take on PC Processors (Wednesday Feb. 04, 2015)
  ARM announced a new processor core, GPU core, and interconnect targeted for mobile SoCs. The 64-bit Cortex-A72 processor core, Mali-T880 graphics core, and CoreLink CCI-500 aim to power a new class of mobile devices that “serve as your primary and only compute platform.”
  
  
• ARM Pumps Mali in Mobile Graphics (Wednesday Feb. 04, 2015)
  ARM's new Mali-T800 graphics cores give it a shot at its ambitious goal of stealing share from Imagination and Qualcomm in mobile graphics.
  
  
• Who Gains the Most from ARM's New IP? (Wednesday Feb. 04, 2015)
  The 2016 mobile phones will be able to see, hear and understand users much better, through a new set of interfaces (going beyond voice, including gestures). The growing CPU and GPU processing power enabled by ARM’s new IP cores also suggests that the next-generation phone will be up to the task of “creating content,” instead of just consuming it, Ferguson added.
  
  
• Microcontroller Sales Regain Momentum After Slump (Tuesday Feb. 03, 2015)
  The outlook for microcontrollers continues to strengthen following a sharp recovery in smartcards, gradual improvements in the global economy, and the emergence of new embedded-systems applications, such as wearable electronics and the Internet of Things (IoT).
  
  
• Ceva Has Vision For Neural Network Processing (Monday Feb. 02, 2015)
  "Certainly we think a big part of the things we do with computer vision will be based on some form of neural networking," Roni Sadeh, vice president of video technology for Ceva, told Electronics360 in a telephone interview.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Industry Posts Record Sales in 2014 (Monday Feb. 02, 2015)
  Global sales for the month of December 2014 reached $29.1 billion, marking the strongest December on record, while December 2014 sales in the Americas increased 16 percent compared to December 2013. Fourth quarter global sales of $87.4 billion were 9.3 percent higher than the total of $79.9 billion from the fourth quarter of 2013.