Recently, the media announced the 2021 global microcontroller manufacturer revenue ranking. This new ranking shows that the income gap between MCU manufacturers is widening.
Popular MCU Market
Single-chip microcontrollers are extremely widely used in embedded control and computing systems, and are increasingly designed to be used in more systems. With the popularity of embedded automation systems and sensors, the new growth of the MCU market has been greatly promoted. After the impact of the epidemic in 2020, demand rebounded in a short period of time, resulting in a special shortage of MCUs in 2021, making it impossible for suppliers in the epidemic to keep up with market development.
Let's take a look at the dramatic ups and downs of the MCU market in the three years from 2019 to 2021. In 2019, the MCU market was significantly affected by the weak global economy, falling by 7%; in 2020, when the new crown epidemic broke out, MCU sales continued to decline, but the decline has been reduced to 2%. Until 2021, when MCU sales suddenly rebounded, the overall market surged 27% to a record $20.2 billion.
The MCU market is rocketing in 2021, with a whopping 27% growth, the highest growth rate since 2000. And with the advent of automotive core shortages, the average selling price (ASP) of MCUs has climbed 12% in 2021, and this price has reached the highest annual increase since the mid-1990s. Due to production constraints, MCU shipments in 2021 will only increase by 13% to 31.2 billion units.
Another look at the 2021 MCU maker rankings. Despite the historic rebound in the market in 2021, the ranking of the world's top five MCU manufacturers remains the same as in 2020. In the latest manufacturer ranking released by the media in the second quarter of this year, the world's top five MCU suppliers are NXP, STMicroelectronics and Infineon in Europe; Microchip in the United States, and Renesas Electronics in Japan.
It is reported that the five largest MCU manufacturers in the world all develop and sell ARM-based microcontrollers. Five years ago, in 2016, the total share of these five MCU factories was 72.2% of the world, and by 2021, they have divided up 82.1% of the global market, which means that the giants in the field of microcontrollers are increasing. their control.
The top-ranked NXP is from the Netherlands, and its MCU revenue leads the second-ranked Microchip by $103 million, while the second-ranked Microchip leads the third-ranked Renesas Electronics by about $40 million. However, from the perspective of market share, the top four are very tight, and the battle for ranking is also quite fierce.
The fourth-ranked STMicroelectronics is the strongest in terms of sales growth, and its revenue in 2021 will increase by 35%, surpassing Renesas Electronics, which ranks ahead of it in sales, and the gap between the two is only 4600. Ten thousand U.S. dollars.
In the past ten years, Renesas has maintained its position as the world's largest MCU supplier for the first five years. But at the end of 2015 NXP acquired Freescale in the United States. Renesas lost its No. 1 position in the market in 2016. In 2021, Renesas' MCU share will be 17.0%, compared with 33.1% in 2011.
Infineon's $9.3 billion acquisition of U.S.-based Cypress Semiconductor in April 2020 further expanded into the top five for MCUs after further expansion in automotive microcontrollers, power management and other embedded system applications. Germany's Infineon retained fifth place in the 2021 microcontroller rankings, with sales rising 22% to $2.4 billion, $996 million less than old rival STMicroelectronics.
Let's take a look at the other MCU manufacturers in the top ten in 2021, namely Texas Instruments, Nuvoton, Roman, Samsung and Toshiba. The five vendors will have combined MCU sales of $2.3 billion in 2021, which is only 11.4% of the total market. Outside the top 10, the remaining MCU suppliers will have a market share of just 6.5% in 2021.
Therefore, it can be said that in the five years from 2016 to 2021, all the major MCU markets will fall into the top five large manufacturers.
