Smartphone sales may be dragging, but chipmakers are getting a lift from the long-promised growth of the Internet of Things.
With signs of softness in the smartphone market, chipmakers have been relying on a boost from another area of considerable focus in recent years: the Internet of Things.
We’ve been hearing for years that the Internet of Things is the Next Big Thing, and we’ve been conditioned to take bold predictions about trillions of devices and tens of billions of dollars in IC revenue with a grain — or more — of salt.
So far, a number of chipmakers have reported softening demand for chips in smartphones, notably TSMC in its quarterly report last month. Still, fears about the smartphone market — and Apple’s iPhone in particular — didn’t stop Apple from reporting solid results for the first calendar quarter of this year, including sales of iPhone X that were better than had been feared.
While the smartphone story may or may not catch up with chip vendors as the year drags on, one thing that is abundantly clear from the first quarter results that have been announced so far is that the lift of IoT on semiconductor sales is accelerating. A number of firms have given credit to IoT for increasing sales, including Intel, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Cypress Semiconductor and Silicon Labs, to name just a few.
“Over the last several years, these companies have reorganized to assign entire divisions to IoT platforms,” said Tom Hackenberg, a principal analyst for embedded processors at IHS Markit. “That’s the reason you are hearing so much more about IoT driving earnings.”
IC Insights projects that total semiconductor sales for IoT system functions will be worth about $24.5 billion this year, up from about $21.3 billion last year. The market research firm is currently in the process of updating its forecast for IoT chip sales, but last year’s estimates have the market growing to $31.1 billion by 2020.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/iot-giving-chipmakers-a-lift/
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