原创 More Analog ASSP Suppliers Addressing High Margin Standard Product Markets

During a recent industry analyst briefing from Freescale Semiconductor there was some discussion about the analog ASSP business, a market strapped with the reputation of having low margins, a branding somewhat correctly earned due to the highly competitive nature of both the wireless and consumer segments. Players in this market for analog include well known names such as STMicroelectronics, Infineon Technologies, Texas Instruments, NXP Semiconductors, and Freescale Semiconductor. ASSPs are highly integrated ICs that provide designers with a solution that would take multiple chips to do discretely, saving on board space, cost, and manufacturing complexity. Other benefits include power savings, faster speeds, and better performance in many cases, thanks to the progression of more integration within the analog space. Integration has always been associated with lower cost while at the same time, discrete high performance products, such as power and data converters have been associated with higher margins. For some time now, there has been a great deal of integration going on in the discrete analog market, from power to operational amplifiers. All of the major standard analog suppliers are doing this. Most of the integration is in power with the most popular products including the PMICs which integrate battery management while providing multiple voltage rails to system blocks in high volume applications like the mobile phone and net/notebook computers. Its likely inevitable that more of the ASSP suppliers will dabble in this space. Weve already seen integrated power products from Qualcomm which introduced PMICs back in 2005 as well as Wolfson Microelectronics, and Freescale Semiconductor. During the briefing, Freescales Tom Deitrich, Senior Vice President and General Manager of RF, Analog & Sensors, noted that over 80 percent of new product development were integrated solutions that would fall in both the ASSP as well as standard product areas. While the top tier suppliers for power have very strong positioning in this space, the increase of traditional ASSP suppliers announcing new products that compete will continue to grow as they leverage their expertise in high level integration and manufacturing capabilities in creating such ICs.