Email to the editor: NXP's target market size

This was an interesting article on Rick Clemmer's NXP restructuring strategy (see NXP's Clemmer says focus produces winners all round).

So now we know high-performance analog and mixed signal ICs are the way forward, driven by automotive, identity and security, power, lighting and basestations; a purported $85 billion market. If only that were true; but the market is nowhere near that big!

Total semiconductor sales were $249 billion in 2008. Take away discretes ($22 billion) and opto ($18bn) leaves $209 billion. Now strip out memory ($46bn and microprocessors ($53bn) and the remainder (logic and analog) totals $110 billion, of which logic is $73bn and analog is $37bn, of which $15 billion is standard linear leaving $95 billion Display drivers and standard logic take a further $27 billion out of this remainder leaving a TAM [total available market] balance of $67 billion.

Even if 100 percent of this was high-performance analog and mixed signal ICs — which it isn't — this is still way short of Clemmer's $85 billion claim.

Malcolm Penn
CEO
Future Horizons
Sevenoaks
England