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Commentary / Analysis

• Computers Remain Top Semiconductor End Use Market in 2013; Communications Growing Fast (Tuesday Mar. 25, 2014)
  While computers remained the leading end use application for semiconductors in 2013, the communications end use market grew in 2013 from 2012 and now is almost on par with the size of the computer end use market. The total semiconductor market grew in 2013 by 4.8 percent, so end use markets may have lost a percentage share of the total while still growing in terms of revenue, as the size of the total market pie grew.
  
  
• Semiconductor IP Market worth $5.63 Billion by 2020 (Tuesday Mar. 25, 2014)
  The Semiconductor IP Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.6% from 2014 to 2020 and reach $5.63 Billion in 2020.
  
  
• Semis Feel R&D Squeeze (Monday Mar. 24, 2014)
  Investors are increasingly rewarding semiconductor companies for short-term returns to shareholders, rather than long term R&D investments, one Wall Street analyst said. If that's true, it marks a significant and unfortunate industry milestone.
  
  
• Three Companies to Account for 52% of Semiconductor CapEx in 2014 (Friday Mar. 21, 2014)
  IC Insights’ soon-to-be-released March Update to The 2014 McClean Report provides a forecast ranking of the top 25 semiconductor capital spenders for 2014. Samsung and Intel are each forecast to spend at least $11.0 billion this year, and TSMC slightly less than $10.0 billion.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts February 2014 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.00 (Friday Mar. 21, 2014)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.29 billion in orders worldwide in February 2014 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.00. A book-to-bill of 1.00 means that $100 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.
  
  
• Why Intel Shouldn't Build an ARM Chip (Tuesday Mar. 18, 2014)
  Some have suggested that Intel could quickly gain a foothold in the mobile system-on-chip market by simply building an ARM -compatible processor core
  
  
• Big sell: IP Trends and Strategies (Monday Mar. 17, 2014)
  Experts at the table: Continued strong growth for semiconductor intellectual property (IP) through 2017 has been forecast by Semico Research. Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design invited Steve Roddy, Product Line Group Director, IP Group at Cadence, Bob Smith, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Uniquify and Grant Pierce, CEO at Sonics to discuss how the IP landscape is changing and provide some perspectives, as the industry moves to new device architectures.
  
  
• IoT Creates New IP Requirements (Friday Mar. 14, 2014)
  Realizing the full potential of the Internet of Things will require a cohesive hardware and software design approach.
  
  
• Will Googles of the World Be Cadence's Best Bet? (Friday Mar. 14, 2014)
  Low-power, security, cloud, and IoT were the looming themes in Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s keynote at CDNLive, Cadence Design Systems’ user conference for IC designers on Tuesday, March 11. Cadence was selling an expanded view of what systems design means on the ecosystem level: From IC and IP to SoC and PCB, it's all part of an enlarging ecosystem.
  
  
• IC Market for Total Personal Computing Systems to Jump 6% in 2014 (Thursday Mar. 13, 2014)
  Following three consecutive years of declines, the IC market for total personal computing systems is forecast to increase 6% to $77.7 billion in 2014 and climb another 6% in 2015 to $82.1 billion, which will be just shy of the record-high $82.3 billion set in 2010, according to the 2014 edition of IC Insights’ IC Market Drivers
  
  
• Embedded System Demand Could Reach Almost 19m Units by 2020 says Strategy Analytics (Wednesday Mar. 12, 2014)
  NHTSA (National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration) recently announced that it will begin steps to bring vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology for new light vehicles. The US Transportation Secretary, Anthony Foxx, said that while he is committed to mandating the technology, there is no target date set.
  
  
• SEMI Reports 2013 Global Semiconductor Equipment Sales of $31.6 Billion (Wednesday Mar. 12, 2014)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totaled $31.58 billion in 2013, representing a year-over-year decrease of 14 percent.
  
  
• ASIC Design Start Market Expected to Grow 7.1% in 2014, Says Semico Research (Monday Mar. 10, 2014)
  Improving market financials and continuing end market demand are combining to push ASIC Design activity to new levels. The Basic SoC market is being driven by the emergence in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the need for silicon solutions for this segment. Mixed Signal ASIC designs have been growing for the last few years as more and more systems seek to interface to analog type 'real world' functions.
  
  
• Apple Design Wins Lift Bosch to Top of MEMS Ranking (Monday Mar. 10, 2014)
  ARM mobile phone and iPad design wins helped Bosch became was the top manufacturer of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors and actuators in 2013, according to market research firm IHS.
  
  
• Renesas Maintains Position as Leading Vendor of OE Automotive Semiconductors, but Infineon Closes Owing to Weakened Yen (Monday Mar. 10, 2014)
  According to the latest analysis by Semicast Research, Renesas Electronics was the leading vendor of semiconductors to the OE automotive sector in 2013, ahead of Infineon Technologies. STMicroelectronics retained its position as third largest vendor, with Freescale fourth and NXP fifth. Semicast estimates that revenues for OE automotive semiconductors totaled USD 27.1 billion in 2013.
  
  
• 10 IC Product Segments to Exceed Total IC Market Growth in 2014 (Friday Mar. 07, 2014)
  IC Insights’ March Update to the 2014 McClean Report provides updated forecasts for 33 major IC product categories through 2018. Ten product categories, led by Tablet MPUs, DRAM, and Cellphone Application MPUs, are forecast to exceed the 7% growth rate forecast for the total IC market this year, with seven of the ten categories forecast to enjoy double-digit growth.
  
  
• NXP: 'We Need to Be More Chinese' (Thursday Mar. 06, 2014)
  When Drue Freeman, NXP's senior vice president, was asked why a fabless automotive chip JV in China, he said: "We've kept thinking we need to be more Chinese than we already are."
  
  
• EDA Hungers For Growth (Thursday Mar. 06, 2014)
  Look at the top line numbers provided by the EDA industry consortium (EDAC) and it appears as if the industry is doing well. In 2010, revenue was $5.285 billion. That number increased to $6.218 billion in 2011, and again to $6.529 billion in 2012, a 9.5% annual growth rate that would satisfy most investors. But the numbers do not tell the whole story. There is an interesting divide growing between the top three EDA companies and those from neighboring industries.
  
  
• Fab Equipment Spending to Increase 20-30 Percent in 2014 (Thursday Mar. 06, 2014)
  The release today of the SEMI World Fab Forecast update reveals a 20 to 30 percent projected increase in semiconductor fab equipment spending in 2014.
  
  
• ARM to Drive Tablet & Set-Top SoC Convergence (Wednesday Mar. 05, 2014)
  The battle over the digital TV market among semiconductor companies is undergoing a quiet but major transformation, as key players reshuffle and target devices multiply.
  
  
• IDC Expects PC Shipments to Fall by -6% in 2014 and Decline Through 2018 (Wednesday Mar. 05, 2014)
  Worldwide PC shipments fell by -9.8% in 2013, slightly better than a projected decline of -10.1%, but still the most severe contraction on record, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.
  
  
• Startup Describes Proprietary Non-Volatile Memory Technology (Wednesday Mar. 05, 2014)
  4DS Inc., a subsidiary of an Australian company called 4DS Pty. Ltd., has been working on non-volatile memory technology since 2007. In December 2013 4DS appointed Guido Arnout, an experienced Silicon Valley semiconductor executive as CEO to lead the commericialization of its so-called MOHJO ReRAM technology. MOHJO stands for metal-oxide heterojunction operation.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Industry Posts Highest-Ever January Sales (Tuesday Mar. 04, 2014)
  SIA today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $26.28 billion for the month of January 2014, an increase of 8.8 percent from January 2013 when sales were $24.15 billion, marking the industry’s highest-ever January sales total and the largest year-to-year increase in nearly three years.
  
  
• 6-core 16nm FinFET ARM Cortex-A57 chips spotted in the wild (Monday Mar. 03, 2014)
  What do you get when you put a 6-core ARM A57 on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process? A lot of pretty pictures and a really big bunch of test chips to play with too.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Tablet Sales Grew 68 Percent in 2013, With Android Capturing 62 Percent of the Market (Monday Mar. 03, 2014)
  Worldwide sales of tablets to end users reached 195.4 million units in 2013, a 68 percent increase on 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. While sales of iOS tablets grew in the fourth quarter of 2013, iOS's share declined to 36 percent in 2013.
  
  
• Validity of New Feature Phone Market (Friday Feb. 28, 2014)
  If this week's Mobile World Congress gave us any clue, low-cost mobile handsets are back in the spotlight. The battle over smartphones loaded with bells and whistles is fading. A new skirmish is emerging in the segment that used to be called feature phones. If anyone assumed that the industry's pundits and market research companies abandoned hope for feature phones a few years ago, well, not so fast.
  
  
• The Unlikely Tale of How ARM Came to Rule the World (Thursday Feb. 27, 2014)
  The chipmaker has teamed with tech giants such as Apple and Qualcomm to help fend off rival Intel
  
  
• Top 10 Semiconductor R&D Leaders Ranked for 2013 (Wednesday Feb. 26, 2014)
  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.
  
  
• 64-Bit Rush Is On at MWC (Tuesday Feb. 25, 2014)
  Since the introduction of the Apple iPhone 5S with the 64-bit Apple A7 processor, it's become something of a status symbol to have a 64-bit mobile applications processor. Intel, Mediatek, Nvidia, and Qualcomm either announced 64-bit plans before or during the Mobile World Congress.
  
  
• Nvidia Has Not Signed a Single Kepler IP Licensing Deal (Monday Feb. 24, 2014)
  Back in mid-2013 Nvidia Corp. announced plans to license its Kepler graphics technology to other chip developers in a bid to increase monetization of its intellectual property and to spread its technologies onto markets and devices that the company simply cannot address. Unfortunately, so far Nvidia has not signed a single IP licensing deal.