Infineon leads way in Industrial chip market

Revenues for semiconductors in the industrial sector have increased by more than fifty per cent in the last two years, to USD 32.4 billion in 2011, with highest revenue growth for analog ICs, LEDs and power discretes. In addition, revenues for semiconductors in the industrial sector have now exceeded those in automotive since 2008, a trend which looks set to continue. Accordingly, the industrial sector has risen in importance at many semiconductor companies over the last five years and continues to do so as more vendors investigate the opportunities offered. Colin Barnden, Principal Analyst at Semicast Research and study author, commented “In practice the industrial sector is a collection of markets within a market, encompassing areas as diverse as video surveillance, heart rate monitoring and agricultural machinery. This diverse application and customer base tends to smooth the ups and downs seen in many other verticals resulting in steady growth. Thus while the industrial sector is fragmented and complex, it is also dependable”. Infineon Technologies is judged to have been the largest semiconductor supplier to the industrial sector in 2011, with an estimated market share of around eight per cent. Following its purchase of National Semiconductor in 2011, Texas Instruments is judged to have consolidated its position as second largest vendor to this sector, ahead of STMicroelectronics. Analog Devices and Renesas Electronics completed the top five. The industrial semiconductor market continues to have no one dominant vendor, with the top suppliers each holding a market share of around five to eight per cent in 2011 and the top twenty together accounting for less than sixty per cent of the total. The largest semiconductor vendors tend to be leading suppliers of analog ICs, MCUs or power discretes, which are the largest product categories. Intel is the only manufacturer in the top ten which is not a leading supplier of these products, reflecting its position as the largest supplier of embedded microprocessors to the industrial sector.