IC Insights' new ranking shows that the top MCU revenue lead is expanding, with the world's top five MCU suppliers accounting for 82% of sales in 2021. In 2019, the global MCU market sales fell by 7% due to the weak global economy; in 2020, MCU sales fell by 2% due to the epidemi

IC Insights’ new ranking shows that the top MCU revenue lead is expanding, with the world’s top five MCU suppliers accounting for 82% of sales in 2021.

In 2019, global MCU market sales fell by 7% due to the weak global economy; in 2020, MCU sales fell by 2% due to the epidemic; in 2021, MCU sales rebounded, increasing by 27%, reaching a record high of 20.2 billion US dollars.

The surge in the MCU market in 2021 is the largest growth in the MCU market since 2000. MCU average selling prices also climbed 12% in 2021, the highest annual increase since the mid-1990s. It is worth noting that due to shortages, MCU shipments will only increase 13% in 2021 to 31.2 billion units.

According to the latest research from IC Insights, the sales rankings of the five largest MCU suppliers remain unchanged compared with 2020. Three of the top five MCU suppliers (NXP, STMicroelectronics, and Infineon) are located in Europe, one is in the United States (Microchip), and one is in Japan (Renesas Electronics).

The MCU supplier with the highest sales in 2021 is NXP, headquartered in the Netherlands. NXP's products focus on four major end markets, namely automotive, industrial and IoT, mobile and communications infrastructure and others.

NXP’s MCU revenue is $103 million ahead of second-place Microchip. Microchip put its sales ahead of No. 3 Renesas Electronics by about $40 million last year, according to new estimates in IC Insights' second-quarter update.

Fourth-ranked STMicroelectronics has had the strongest sales growth in the MCU rankings, with revenue up 35% in 2021, trailing only its Japanese rival by $46 million. Renesas had been the largest MCU supplier for the first five years of the past decade, but its number one position was displaced in 2016 after NXP acquired US-based Freescale in late 2015. In 2011, Renesas' market share in MCU was still 33.1%, and in 2021, Renesas' market share increased to 17.0%.

Germany's Infineon maintained fifth place in the ranking in 2021, with sales increasing 22% to US$2.4 billion, which was approximately US$996 million less than ST's sales in the MCU field last year. Infineon entered the top five MCU rankings after acquiring U.S.-based Cypress Semiconductor for $9.3 billion in April 2020 to further expand automotive microcontrollers, power management and other embedded system applications.

Domestic MCU companies catching up

It is worth noting that these five MCU suppliers still accounted for 72.2% of the global market in 2016, and in 2021 these companies accounted for 82.1% of global MCU sales. Relatively speaking, the sixth to tenth MCU suppliers: Texas Instruments , Nuvoton, Romon, Samsung and Toshiba . Last year's MCU sales were US$2.3 billion, accounting for 11.4% of the total market. Outside the top ten, MCU vendors have a market share of only 6.5% in 2021.

At present, domestic MCU manufacturers mainly compete in low-end and mid-range application fields such as consumer electronics, smart cards, and water, electricity and gas meters. In areas with large market potential and relatively high profits, such as industrial control, automotive electronics, and the Internet of Things market, they are all overtaken by foreign MCUs. Manufacturer's monopoly.

Looking at last year as a whole, the year-on-year revenue growth rate of domestic MCU listed companies all reached more than 50%. For example, Zhongying Electronics grew 47.58% year-on-year; Espressif Technology grew 66.77% year-on-year; GigaDevice Innovation (MCU part) A year-on-year increase of 225.36%, etc.

GigaDevice has the largest ARM architecture MCU product line in China, ranking first among local MCU manufacturers for five consecutive years. Annual MCU shipments exceed 200 million units, and cumulative shipments will exceed 600 million units in June 2021. From 2013 to 2020, the annual shipment CAGR reached 160%. GigaDevice Innovation MCU has 28 product series and more than 370 products, covering entry-level, mainstream and high-performance products. In terms of cores, the M3 core was launched in 2013 and the M4 core was launched in 2016.

National Technology stated in the 2021 annual report that for the general MCU field, the company will expand the 32-bit MCU product research and development technology path, make it more refined, deeper and broader, and implement higher performance technology paths; in the field of high-end high-performance MCU, high reliability It has invested resources online in strategic products such as automotive MCU and high-reliability BMS.

Fudan Micro MCU’s cumulative shipments are around 500 million units. The company’s MCU team covers many related aspects such as chip design, software and hardware support, and chip testing, and continues to work hard in this market. In 2021, Fudan Micro's vehicle specifications passed the AEC-Q100 vehicle specification certification and are currently being promoted and trialled in the market.

It is worth noting that the products of the top 5 MCU manufacturers are all based on the ARM architecture, and therefore many domestic MCU manufacturers are working on the RISC-V core.

RISC-V is compact and low-power, which may be critical for embedded applications. And because RISC-V is an emerging field, and there is not much technological and ecological gap between domestic and foreign MCU manufacturers, RISC-V is also known as one of the new driving forces of MCU.

GigaDevice launched the world's first RISC-V core MCU in 2019, with a total of 14 models, and launched the M33 core MCU in 2020; Apte Microelectronics launched the 32-bit high-performance and high-reliability MCUAPT32F1/7 based on RISC-V ; Xianjie Semiconductor HPM6000 series flagship product HPM6750 uses dual RISC-V cores (AndesCore D45), setting a new MCU performance record of more than 9000 CoreMar and more than 4500 DMIPS performance, providing great computing power for edge computing applications .

GigaDevice’s annual revenue for MCU in 2021 is 2.456 billion yuan. This figure is still far from the top 5 in the world. However, this number is no longer so far away from the TOP 10. According to IC Insights data, the total revenue of the sixth to tenth places is US$2.3 billion, so Toshiba's highest revenue is US$460 million, which is about 3.09 billion yuan based on today's exchange rate . It can be seen that although the MCU market is monopolized by foreign giants, the Chinese MCU market still has room for domestic MCUs to grow, and the distance will get closer and closer.

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