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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05/11/10
Bits of Memory: Essence of the Mobile Phone Market
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."
Prophetic words, because Android is helping transform the mobile device market with standard software platforms that enable quick development of phones utilizing the free Android platform.
The new competition in the smartphone arena is reminiscent of that of the Wintel segment of the PC. In the PC industry, Microsoft and Intel worked together to define the processor and software. They encouraged competition among memory vendors and others to lower the value of peripheral products. Google is doing the same by establishing the Android as the standard. In November 2008, the Federal Communications Commission formally agreed to open up "white spaces (unused television spectrum)," for wireless broadband service. As many competitors have pointed out, the Android strategy makes everything except Web services a commodity.
This mobile phone platform standardization presents new opportunities to OEMs just as HM (hybrid memory) provides new opportunities. As covered in a current report of ours, "Hybrid Memory (HM) provides numerous advantages to OEMs as well as to memory manufacturers. By using HM versus conventional discrete memory in a design, the risk of adoption of any new memory type would be reduced. Early confirmation of acceptable reduces investment risk and accelerates product to become mainstream product. Flexible packaging options allow more flexibility in feature sets as well as between volatile and non-volatile memory options. Market acceptance of HM concepts in the Consumer segment demonstrates the current state of the art and confirms the attributes of flexibility and lower manufacturing costs."
Applications enabled by Android include gaming, GPS (for locating services and points of interest, as well as correct routes), Google sky map-showing the interesting astronomical features of the area of the sky you point your phone towards, documents to go-Microsoft Word, Excel etc. available on the road, movies, maps, reference material, plus access to up to 20 tweets. Motorola, LG and Samsung-the top handset vendors in the US-are all making handsets based on Android.
Why this is significant, is that content is the important factor driving new consumer products. Why is Kindle so successful despite a high price tag and limited functions? It is the amazing access to all kinds of books-anywhere, anytime, any language. Apple's success with the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad is secured by its access to content.
Just like Apple, other PC companies are getting into the Consumer device business. Enter HP and Lenovo in not just the tablet market, but also the smartphone market. These markets will reach far beyond the current installed base of PCs and cellular phones. Lenovo, primarily a laptop computer company, offers its own Lenovo X1 (smartphone). HP offers its iPAQ handheld computer, also a smartphone. Dell plans to market other vendors' smartphones.
So why would memory care about these markets that implement about 64MB of memory when the PC segment now implements more than 4GBytes of memory in the average PC. This is a rapidly developing market that depends upon offering a wide variety of features for users in specific localities. These features can target a nation, region, gender or age. A single model cannot serve all needs, but the ease of adoption of HM will enable the introduction of new memory technology at smaller density sizes in this very volatile, fast-growing segment. Service providers are looking at this as an opportunity to provide services specific to cultures and user groups. Carriers do not want to just become a communications channel. So expect a wider variety of handsets that target specific use groups. Also look for inexpensive phones with lots of apps.
The handset and mobile market will be important for memory vendors. Convergent Semiconductors forecasts that by 2015, 25% of memory units shipped and 15% of memory GBytes shipped will be HM. Most of this will serve the mobile market. This will be nonvolatile memory and include memory products identified today, and evolving memory products that range from a package option to logic and memory combined on the same die.
This latest report is: Conventional Memory and the Impact of Hybrid Memory, from the report series: HM: A Roadmap to Green Chip Development.
Our Latest Articles
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."
[More]