Qualcomm boosts automotive market share with acquisition of CSR

Qualcomm’s acquisition of CSR is more about buying—and as a result, enlarging—market share in automotive than about complementing Qualcomm’s product portfolio.

With the purchase, Qualcomm will become the world’s fourth-largest supplier of application-specific integrated circuits (ICs) for automotive infotainment, with a 10 percent market share. In 2013, the company ranked 11th with a market share of 2.7 percent, unchanged from 2012 and 2011 

Significantly, Qualcomm through the new acquisition will attain leadership in the key segment for car wireless application ICs with a market share of 38 percent.

Qualcomm already has a strong position in cellular baseband solutions with its Snapdragon and Gobi processors. The California-based company largely dominates this market with 84 percent of industry revenue as of last year.

Qualcomm also has solutions for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for automotive with its VIVE brand, but its share is still very modest at present.

Meanwhile, CSR’s main revenue generator is in the wireless application IC area, especially for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, where the company is the market leader.

The company’s next top product lines in terms of revenue are multimedia/navigation processing, navigation receivers and AM/FM tuners/audio processing.

To learn more, see the IHS report entitled: “Competitive Landscaping Tool CLT – Automotive – Q3 2014.”