Press
08/30/10
Hybrid Devices-The Memory Market's New High Value Product Category
What are Hybrid Devices and why will it move the semiconductor industry forward?
This report outlines the market opportunities, market and financial drivers, financial opportunities, near-term technology enablers required for introduction, and technology hurdles and market challenges for advanced Hybrid Devices.
Hybrid Devices Promises High Impact on Consumer Electronics
How can key technology events be evaluated to predict Consumer Electronics Trends?
This report examines steps to acceptance and success of a consumer product. Hybrid Devices can have a significant revenue growth impact for new memory products for Consumer Electronics. Hybrid Devices with their inherent flexibility promise to significantly alter the architecture of Consumer devices, shift BOM (Bill of Material) costs to variable purchase plug-in Hybrid Devices, enhance competitive differentiation, and provide for early adoption of new memory technologies.
Conventional Memory and the Impact of Hybrid Devices
How does memory technology adapt to enable the rapidly evolving consumer mobile market?
Hybrid Devices provides numerous advantages to OEMs as well as to memory manufacturers. By using HD versus conventional discrete memory in a design, the risk of adoption of any new memory type would be reduced. Early confirmation of acceptability reduces investment risk, and the period required to become a mainstream product. Multiple packaging options allow greater flexibility in feature sets, and in the mix of volatile and non-volatile memory solutions.Market acceptance of HD concepts in the Consumer segment demonstrates the current state of the art and confirms the attributes of flexibility and lower manufacturing costs. Market acceptance of HD concepts in the Consumer segment demonstrates the current state of the art and confirms the attributes of flexibility and lower manufacturing costs.
The Impact of Hybrid Devices on the ASSP Market
Why are Hybrid Device concepts impacting the ASSP Market?
In the next decade, as designs cross the 30nm lithography boundary and approach 12nm, Hybrid Devices that incorporate standard memory, new memory, logic, processors, and analog on a single fabrication process will again transform the platform IC market and many types of Hybrid Devices will displace current ASSP devices as a preferred choice for custom platform IC products.
Four Generations of Hybrid Devices Enable Now and Future Smartphone Market
How can each of the four generations of HD enhance the features of the Smartphone?
Hybrid Devices will accelerate the shift in Smartphone system architecture by moving BOM costs from the core phone to the accessory Hybrid Devices. This will accomplish the rapid transition to a Cognitive Radio Smartphone that will use the wireless spectrum more efficiently. HD will enable vendors to add functionality without incurring additional base handset costs.
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05/08/10
Details of additional reports will be made available as reports are competed.
Click below for a partial list of scheduled additional reports.
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02/12/10
Bits of Memory: 2010 Still Challenging
The nice thing about 2010 is that the revenue projections for semiconductor manufacturers, OEMs and the economy as a whole are much brighter than the projections were a year ago for 2009. Even the DRAM industry is optimistic about revenue-for a change. Demand is increasing both on the PC side and the consumer product side. Supply is expected to be tight for the year as growth begins to make an impact in the end markets in the second quarter.
Demand increased in fourth quarter for the DDR2 and DDR3 components in the PC sector. This increased demand has raised concerns that the shortages in the marketplace will occur before the second half. Since the middle of January, however, demand has declined and is expected to be less than spectacular in the PC segments through mid-March.
The shrink to 40nm that will be done by all the major DRAM vendors is causing further concern about the availability of product in the second half. The two major issues are: first, the successful implementation of the finer geometry and how long it will take to achieve acceptable yields. The second is the number of lithography systems that are on order and scheduled to be delivered in the April-June timeframe. A single equipment manufacturer will deliver over 90% of the systems. Lead-time on the systems has been pushed out beyond 10 months on new orders as the longest delivery date.
The industry is currently waiting for the crossover between DDR3 and DDR2 components. Some module makers are shipping DDR2 and DDR3 at close to price parity. As the DDR3 volume continues to increase, price parity should be in place by the end of first quarter.
Consumer App With Surprising Growth
The consumer industry is also optimistic. While 2009 was certainly no banner year for consumer products; their decline in the US was a mere 8 percent according to CEA (Consumer Electronics Association). There were a number of products that did very well. One was the E-Book, which we mentioned as a new growth market that rewards content delivery instead of system performance specs (as with the PC). The QUE proReader by Plastic Logic was introduced at CES. It provides Barnes & Noble bookstores with electronic distribution of print. There already is strong competition for this market from Amazon's Kindle and Sony's eBook. Our forecast mid last year projected the Kindle and Sony eBook to reach sales of around a million units. By December 2009, the unit sales were around 3 million units.
As schools adopt the E-Book as textbook replacements, a generation of enthusiastic users emerges. Interviews conducted in airports over the last few months of people using E-Books elicited overwhelmingly positive responses. College-age respondents claimed their gift of choice to relatives was the E-Book. E-Books enable access to best-selling novels, classics, newspapers, and magazines. As more E-Book manufacturers enter the market and more publishers embrace the delivery system, the price will fall to make this a sub-$100 product. The cost of the product is incidental since providing content generates the real revenue. The magnitude of proliferation of the E-Book was a surprise, and it continues to be a winning consumer product. The market expands from 140,000 units in 2007 to more than 13 million by 2011.
Worldwide E-Book Sales Revenue and Units
There will be competition for this product, but it looks like a good niche to us at Convergent. Innovation to make delivery of content effortless and efficient goes a long way to create a market.
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08/30/10
The memory market is once again attempting to fund impending crucial large capital investments in a mature market burdened by commodity pricing. Opportunities for memory products have been characterized as very competitive markets of very great size, but typically with profit margins that tend to rise and fall according to market conditions.
While this cycle is generally regarded as an economic driver for the semiconductor industry as a whole, the model is more closely associated with the memory market due to the increased amplitudes of the cycles. With limited opportunities to differentiate memory products, commodity pricing is now an unchanging market characteristic. With the historic trend toward a single standard product that supports the widest number of applications, these market characteristics have become accepted as the signature model of memory production.
Even though current supply/demand trends are temporarily favorable to the memory manufacturers, the question to ask is whether this trend toward feast or famine can be changed for companies that shift their product strategies toward Hybrid Devices. We believe that Hybrid Devices can provide such products and enable significant new revenue streams while generating higher profits for memory suppliers.
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05/11/10
There are geographic regions of the world that are expected to adopt what is currently called the smartphone at a greater rate than any consumer product to date. The interesting fact is that the adoption is so high not because of the phone's features, but because of its applications. As Google said when it introduced the Android platform in November 2007, the announcement was regarding "...the Open Handset Alliance and Android...more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can't imagine today."
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