By John McHale
TEMPE, Ariz. - Demand for general-purpose digital signal processor (DSP) chips dipped 2 percent last year to the $7.6 billion level because of a severe drop in the Chinese cellular telephone market in the first half of 2005, according to a new market study from Forward Concepts.
That market will resume growth to a healthier 15 percent level in 2006, driven primarily by the 3G and 2.5 cellular markets, Forward Concepts analysts say. However, the new study emphasizes the even bigger market for DSP technology in the embedded DSP market that has grown to $14.3 billion, or nearly twice that of general-purpose DSP chips.
The new 322-page study, DSP Strategies: Embedded Chip Trend Continues, includes the results of a detailed survey of DSP professionals from more than 30 countries.
“The general-purpose DSP market was slightly down last year, but market leader Texas Instruments grew another 15 percent and gained a full eight percentage points to reach a 58 percent market share,” says Forward Concepts’ president and principal analyst, Will Strauss.
Freescale Semiconductor was the only other major chip company to gain market share, growing 7.2 percent to a 14 percent market share. The other key players, Agere Systems and Analog Devices, saw DSP revenue declines because they were more heavily tied to the Asia Pacific market when it crashed in the first half of last year. If China opens its 3G market this year, they could recover very well.
“The general-purpose DSP market is the best known and is dominated by the four companies mentioned above,” Strauss continues. The embedded DSP market, on the other hand, is where most new product opportunities will be. That embedded market is served by more than 100 chip vendors that provide DSP technology in the forms of ASSPs, ASICs, FPGAs, RISC/DSP combos, DSP-enhanced MPUs, DSP-enhanced RISC cores, and state machines.
“The many embedded DSP markets are dominated by companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom, Infineon, and Marvell, while the major RISC vendors have all added DSP capability to their IP offerings,” Strauss says. The report profiles the DSP market stance of these and over 100 other chip and core vendors.
The study acknowledges that the general-purpose DSP market is dominated by communications applications, with cellular being the biggest. The embedded DSP market, however, is more closely identified with consumer applications like set-top boxes, DVD players, DVD receivers, A/V receivers, MP3 players, and digital still cameras, the report states.
However, that market segment also includes embedded DSP in communications chips for Gigabit Ethernet LAN PHYs, WLAN, WiMAX, and Bluetooth basebands as well as DSL and cable modems. All of these and new DSP-centric markets like DAB and HDTV are also forecast in the report through 2010.
Details of the study and a complete table of contents can be found at www.fwdconcepts.com/DSP06.htm.
