How Big Is The Analogue/Mixed Signal Market?

Clemmer claimed that his current NXP restructuring strategy focusing on high-performance analogue and mixed signal ICs is the way forward, driven by ‘automotive, identity and security, power, lighting and basestations’, which are, in NXP’s analysis, an US$85 billion market.

Putting this $85 billion figure to Lothar Maier, CEO of Linear Technology Corporation, I got the response: “It seems a little high. Before the downturn the analogue and mixed signal market was $38-40 billion. Now it’s dropped to $30 billion. So that does seem a little high,” replied Maier.

Or a lot higher.

Malcolm’s Penn response to the $85 billion figure was: ‘Total semiconductor sales were 249 billion in 2008. Take away discretes ($22 billion) and opto ($18 billion leaves $209 billion. Now strip out Memory ($46 billion and Micro ($53 billion) and the rest (Logic and Analogue) totals $110 billion, of which Logic is $73 billion and Analogue $37 billion, of which $15 billion is standard linear leaving $95 billion Display drivers and Standard Logic take a further $27 billion out of this remainder leaving a TAM balance of $67 billion. Even if 100% of this was ‘high-performance analogue and mixed signal ICs’ – which it isn’t – this is still way short of NXP’s claim that high performance analogue and mixed signal ICs are an$85 billion market.’

However Clemmer is not without his supporters. Asked if he agreed with the $85 billion market figure, Dr Martin Rofheart, senior vp at Gennum and general manager of its analogue and mixed signal products, replied: “When you look at the totality of analogue and mixed signal, it’s just about anything that’s high speed, and the whole world is going high speed. I don’t doubt their $85bn estimate at all. The whole world is becoming a high-speed mixed signal/analogue domain.”