NXP leads automotive ASSP semiconductor market for second year in a row in 2012

USA: Benefiting from its leadership position in AM/FM tuner and audio processing chips, NXP Semiconductors NV in 2012 retained its rank as the world’s top supplier of application-specific standard product (ASSP) semiconductors for the automotive infotainment market.

Netherlands-based NXP last year posted automotive infotainment ASSP revenue of $459 million, giving it a market share of 15 percent, according to insights from a forthcoming report from the IHS Automotive and Telematics Service. The company’s market share remained unchanged compared to 2011.

“NXP is extremely well-positioned with its ASSP portfolio for the AM/FM tuner and audio processing segment, accounting nearly for half of all sales of these products in 2012,” said Luca DeAmbroggi, senior analyst for automotive infotainment at IHS.

“While NXP’s market share held steady, the firm actually expanded is infotainment ASSP revenue by 2 percent, cementing its top-ranked status for the second year in a row. Like the other top infotainment ASSP suppliers, NXP achieved its leadership position by maintaining dominance in specific business lines.

French-Italian manufacturer STMicroelectronics was in second place with $389 million for a 13 percent share, separated by just $1 million from third-ranked Renesas Electronics of Japan with $388 million, also with a 13 percent portion of the market.

The rest of the Top 10 each had revenue ranging from $91 million to $280 million. Overall, the semiconductor market for automotive infotainment last year was worth $3.02 billion, up 2 percent from $2.96 billion in 2011.

STMicroelectronics dominated in the audio amplifier and digital/satellite radio tuner and decoder trades, with market share of 47 percent and 71 percent, respectively. However, STMicroelectronics suffered a 12 percent contraction in sales during the year, due to inventory reduction among its key customers as well as delays in the introduction of new devices and technologies.

With STM’s loss, Renesas has managed to narrow the gap between itself at No. 3 and the runner-up position after a 6 percent gain in revenue. Renesas is now a threat to STM after recovering from the 2011 Japan tsunami disaster.

Renesas is followed in fourth place by another Japanese supplier, Panasonic, with $280 million in revenue and a 9 percent share; and by British chipset maker CSR in fifth spot with $212 million or 7 percent share.

The rest of the Top 10 were, in descending order, Toshiba of Japan; Dallas-based Texas Instruments; Freescale Semiconductor, also from Texas; and Fujitsu Semiconductor and Rohm Semiconductor, both from Japan.

Other notable players in the space but outside of the Top 10 were Nvidia, Intel and Qualcomm, all from California; as well as Arizona-based Microchip Technology. In particular, Nvidia successfully imported its experience in multimedia and graphics processing from the consumer segment into automotive, mainly concentrating its initial efforts on infotainment premium brands. Less successful than Nvidia but likewise flexing its muscle was Intel, which is moving into the multimedia sector of car infotainment via the chipmaker’s Atom processor platform.

All the vendors reporting results for the year were tracked strictly by ASSP sales confined to the vehicle infotainment sector. Unlike general-purpose microcontrollers, memories or optical semiconductors, the ASSP silicon chips involved in this case are deployed to enable features such as AM/FM radio, digital terrestrial and satellite radio, audio amplifiers, GPS and navigation, multimedia logic and connectivity solutions like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and vehicle networking, to name a few.