The top suppliers for power management ICs are . . .

The top suppliers for power management ICs are . . .

The leading power management semiconductor manufacturer in 2011 was, once again, Texas Instruments. It didn’t hurt that TI acquired another leading manufacturer (National Semiconductor) to remain the leading manufacturer with a 10.0% share of market in a highly fragmented field of more than 100 suppliers, according to an IHS iSuppli Power Management Market Share and Supplier Analysis report.

According to the report, TI’s 2011 power management revenue was $3.18 billion, up 25% from $2.54 billion a year earlier. The French-Italian entity STMicroelectronics and Infineon Technologies of Germany, remained in the second and third spots, respectively. STM had power management revenue of $2.25 billion, down from $2.29 billion — good enough for a 7.1% share of market. Infineon saw revenue climb to $2.09 billion, up from $2.00 billion, giving it a 6.6% market share last year.

The market for power management semiconductors, according to IHS, includes products related specifically to the conversion, distribution, and management of power in electronic systems. Among these products are power management integrated circuits like voltage regulators and references, as well as power interface ICs and application-specific power management ICs. Other important power management products are power discretes, such as power transistors greater than 1 W, rectifiers greater than 0.5 A, and thyristors.

The power management space as a whole grew last year. The top 20 companies gained an additional 3.8 percentage points in market share during 2011—the result of companies deepening their penetration in areas requiring higher investments for new power management technologies, such as the automotive and industrial markets.

Acquisitions in the year also helped boost the standing of many of the acquiring companies. For example, TI grew its market share 2 percentage points after it bought National Semiconductor. Arizona-based ON Semiconductor made the Top 10 for the first time in 2011, landing in 10th, after its purchase of Sanyo.

The report also made note of the accomplishment of Japanese supplier Mitsubishi, which took the lead in power transistors over Infineon for the first time, and went from eighth in 2010 to No. 4 in 2011 with revenue growth of 52%. Mitsubishi’s leap displaced fellow Japanese firm Renesas Technology, which fell to fifth place, from fourth a year earlier.

All told, the market for power management semiconductors in 2011 amounted to $31.9 billion in revenue, up 1.8% from $31.3 billion in 2010. In comparison, the total semiconductor market last year declined by 1.4%. While the first half of 2011 delivered decent business for power management with demand coming from the consumer and industrial segments, the second half proved dismal as demand disappeared. By then, the economies in Europe and Japan had soured, and spending incentives provided by the government in China had also expired.

According to IHS iSuppli, the challenge for power management suppliers is how to stand out and remain profitable in a very tight and crowded field. During the 2008-09 downturn when consumer markets were hit hard, many power management suppliers tried to shift their market focus toward higher-value areas such as the industrial, automotive and communications sectors. The report says that all the power management IC companies unfortunately, went after the same applications, and flooded the market. IHS iSuppli believes that the strategy to steer away from consumer-type markets toward high-value sectors needs to be reconsidered: There simply won’t be enough room for everyone to stay in business. And because the so-called high-value markets are also much smaller than the consumer space, the opportunities for profit are also more limited.

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Paul O’Shea