Darnell Group Inc. in Corona, Calif., unveiled detailed findings about the changing business dynamics for digital power controller integrated circuits (ICs) at the Digital Power Europe (DPE) conference in Munich, Germany.

Digital power controller ICs will enter the growth phase of the product life cycle by late 2008 or early 2009, characterized by accelerating growth rates, reports Darnell president Jeff Shepard and senior analyst Linnea Brush.

Designers who use digital controllers in the introduction phase—the innovators and early adopters of the classic diffusion of innovations theory—are developing second-generation designs and using more and more digital power devices, Darnell officials say.

In this case, accelerating growth will result from factors such as including improved comfort with and understanding of digital power technology and the introduction of second-generation digital control ICs with features better matched with the needs of specific application segments.

Shepard and Brush reported their market research in a paper entitled “Digital Controller IC Product and Pricing Trends,” in which they presented a detailed discussion of product introduction and market development trends in the rapidly emerging digital power IC market.

In addition to analyzing product introduction trends, they discussed determination of the current status of digital power ICs in terms of product life cycle analysis.

Brush and Shepard also discussed the current “mind share dynamics” and market leadership in digital power. The authors projected the potential profitability of digital power ICs in the next several years. The analysis also pinpointed an anticipated non-linear “discontinuity” in the pricing curve for digital power ICs, at which time price declines will slow significantly.

“This is the most detailed and thorough quantitative study of digital power ICs completed to date. We gathered pricing and product features for 147 digital power ICs from 17 manufacturers,” Shepard says. “For the pricing analysis, we added 100 analog controllers from 10 companies to help identify the coming inflection point for this dynamic market.”

The life cycle analysis included pricing trends for digital and analog controller ICs. Now that digital ICs have entered commercial production, unit volumes have reached a level that enables a statistically meaningful picture of pricing trends based on the concept of a “learning curve,” Darnell officials say.

The resulting learning curve projection of future prices for digital power ICs agrees with earlier predictions by Darnell Group for price “parity” between digital and analog controller ICs, based on Moore’s Law for semiconductors.

For more information, visit Darnell Group Inc. online at www.darnell.com.