Mobile phones and computer chips, once the backbone of the semiconductor industry, are now struggling to grow, and now these companies are beginning to get involved in a year-long wave of mergers and acquisitions as they turn to areas that were not seen in the past, such as automotive electronics, to seek growth. . Consumer chip makers who once thought the automotive electronics market was too small to care about are now paying close attention to things like Tesla, Google and Apple, and are now starting to develop devices that connect cars to the Internet.
Current status of the automotive chip industry
For today's chip providers, automotive electronics are expected to guarantee their growth rate. On Monday, semiconductor company NXP will acquire another semiconductor company, Freescale, for $11.8 billion, and take away from Renesas, one of the world's top ten semiconductor chip suppliers. The title of the world's top car chip maker forced other competitors to respond. Infineon (formerly Siemens Semiconductors) has already taken action - according to reports, Infineon has begun discussions on investing in Renesasas.
Dialog, the original manufacturer of power management chips for the iPhone, is also planning to enter the field – they plan to break into the field by acquiring US chipmaker Atmel.
When the global chip market shrank 0.8% to $377.8 billion this year, US IT research firm Gartner predicted that the automotive chip market is expected to reach 40 billion in 2019, with a mixed growth rate of about 6% per year. "A decade ago, the car (chip industry) was not hot enough. Now it has shown its charm." Reinhard Ploss, president of Infineon, the leader of automotive energy management chips, told investors.
Infineon's goal is to achieve an annual growth of 8% in the automotive-related business within the next seven years. The in-vehicle chip market, which was not valued, has gradually become the next enthusiasm under the enthusiasm of many semiconductor companies. But they have to face another problem - due to differences in countries and regions, when the car is designed, the product logic will be different, so how do new players enter this huge potential market?
Giant in action
Mobile phone or computer chip makers such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Intel, to make up for this deficiency, can only enter these markets by acquiring OEMs like Altera and Dialog.
Today's cars need to use 100 separate electronic controllers, each of which is connected to a specific function, such as driving or braking, through a complex circuit. These aspects are the areas in which these mobile/computer chip manufacturers have been deeply involved for many years. At the same time, the acquisition can also give funds to companies with tight funding to continue research and development.
But among all the players, only Infineon has taken the first move and spent $3 billion earlier this year to acquire InternaTIonal Recifier, which indicates that it is ready to acquire more companies. Others "Players" are still limited by how much they should spend on this. "The automotive sector will continue to grow at a high rate in the next 10 to 15 years," said Bernd Laux, an analyst at CA Cheuvreux.
In the mobile processor market, the computer chip giant Intel, which has been struggling for ten years, has recently acquired $16.7 billion to acquire programmable features in order to add autopilot functionality to Intel processors to complete this vital car function. Chip manufacturer Altera.
The number of semiconductor M&A transactions announced or completed this year reached $125 billion, as larger, more profitable companies have swallowed up small companies that could not afford to fund the next generation of automotive chips, manufacturing processes and data markets.
If they also do car chips...
We have analyzed the development trend of mobile phone CPU chips; we have also analyzed in detail how chip makers such as Nvidia have lost on the mobile side. All this shows that a chip maker like Nvidia looking for a sideline outside of a mobile/computer chip seems to be a sure thing.
After analyzing the prospects of car chips, it seems that these companies are inevitably cutting into this field. So if they really do car chips, how will our life change?
If they join this game, the first thing that will benefit is unmanned – this technology relies on the powerful computing power and graphics processing power of the car's main control computer, which is the mobile/desktop side. The strength of processor manufacturers. After all, the existing chip makers have grown stronger in the fierce competition of chips over the years, relying on deep research in the computing and image fields.
Various types of intelligent vehicle terminals have appeared on the market, such as the car rearview mirrors we have introduced, as well as the smart car instrument. The reason for the emergence of these smart car hardware is that the traditional car is far less interactive and easy to use than the mobile phone in our hands. If the car's main control computer is replaced with chips from these manufacturers, the functions of these terminals may be built into the vehicle in the future, without the need to purchase additional equipment.
Of course, these are just our guesses based on the existing technology. In the future, there may be more functions based on these chips, which are more than expected. And these chip makers may be pushed back to the wave!
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