Market share data for microcontrollers

Here you go:

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
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Fine if you have tend grand to spare.

Ian

Anyone who _would_ spend so foolishly would not have ten thousand bucks to start.

start.

They say their revenues were almost $900 million dollars in the last fiscal year so I guess there are a lot of foolish people. But really, these guys are the original source of most of the statistics quoted in the "marketing hype". It costs a lot of money to reliably gather and evaluate such market intelligence. You might be able to find some free summaries in trade magazine articles.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
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Thanks, I think (?). No doubt it is very good, but out of my price range by aprox $9,995.

I have located a rough ranking for 8bit devices, but not from an independent source:

page 3.

16bit

to start.

;-)

They quote just the same original source (Dataquest Gartner). Things have changed since 2000. Microchip now claims #1 over Motorola in

8-bitters in terms of units shipped (dollars may be different), and Renesas is now in existence- a merger of Hitachi and Mitsubishi. No doubt other things are different as well.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
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You know, I read this statistic before somewhere, and I'm still surprised and deeply suspicious. Where the hell ARE all these PICs? Are people buying them and putting them in landfill just to get the sales numbers up? When I open consumer appliances and peripherals - monitors, TVs, USB peripherals, remote controls, etc etc - I find

8051s, ASICs (many with 8051s in them - USB devices in particular), I find weird proprietary 4-bit and 8-bit processors, I find processors based around 6502 and 65C816, I find DSPs. So, where are all these umpteen trillions of PICs going? Surely the market for PlayStation modchips isn't that massive? The only Microchip parts I see on a regular basis are EEPROMs - often, attached to 8051s :)

I've been told that Visteon is a big Microchip client, but surely they are not the world's #1 consumer of microcontrollers?

That's because there are many yardsticks to use, and everyone wants to 'talk up' their own position :)

eg Microchip claim to be #1, but only in volumes, as their ASP is very low (~$1) - they also (of course) avoid adding all the 80C51 cores from various vendors, to give a 80C51 cores shipped... Other companies make more revenue, then there is the issue of just where the 8/16 bit boundary lies.. -jg

One in every credit/debit/loyalty card?

Paul Burke

Good question - Their ASP gives a clue, it's still very close to $1, so that's truckloads of very low braincell count devices, selling into the 'disposable' markets. They don't claim trillions, IIRC they boasted about getting to their second (US) billion, and their annual run rate is some few hundred millions.

-jg

I have only seen PICs in two commercial products that I have disassembled. One was in a hair dryer and the other in a CO2 monitor.

Ian

No.

Ian

I know what you mean. I've seen them in CO detectors, all kinds of low volume industrial products (but just as many 8051s and 6805s in those applications). The 8051 suppliers are split among a whole bunch of manufacturers so their share is probably much higher than it appears at first blush. Moto's parts are used in smart cards and automotive. I suspect most of Microchip's volume is in cheap parts and most of the profit is in the newer flash parts, but that's just a guess. How many Moto parts do you see?

Automotive. One of the bigger consumers of electronics in North American manufacturing.

You would likely also find that they have deliberately excluded the Sunplusses of the world from their ranking by some artifice or another (perhaps simply because they're not being paid to do the work and uChip, Moto etc. don't care about the toy market). Some parts might be classed as DSPs or 16 bits and thus excluded. Without the Dataquest info we don't know what they did exactly.

It's a bit like the parable of the visually impaired men and the elephant.

"An elephant is warm and squishy".

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
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Hi, pics are mostly found in the domestic market where the high volume is. The

8051 has allmost no presence as a stand alone chip is these markets because of cost. There is some presence in asics this is mainly due to licensing arrangements rather than any technical merit.

Define domestic market and high volume and name some products.

Strange. Philips use 8051s in their TVs, VCRs, CD &DVD players/recorders and DECT and GSM handsets.

Ian

I'd venture to guess "automotive." That's where the last few PIC projects of mine have gone. It's funny how Microchip always seem to have a part with the right mix of peripherals for the application. It's usually possible (even easy) to find a part with all the peripherals you need, and nothing you don't need. Well, I always wish they had more memory...

The EMC guys like the PICs too, because they're quiet (esp. compared with AVRs, which we also use a lot) and hold up well in ESD and BCI testing.

As a software guy, I don't like them much (esp. compared with AVRs -- oh, I already said that... ;-). But the code on PIC projects tends to be pretty lightweight anyway.

Regards,

-=Dave

--
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

There's certainly a fair few PIC18s in automotive, and the more than the odd PIC16 doing little slave things.

Nobody chooses a PIC because of the CPU core - they are usually chosen for packaging, peripherals, simplicity of clocking them, and to some extent on price.

pete

--
pete@fenelon.com "there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas"

A few years ago I took apart a very low-cost wireless X10 remote control. It turned out to have a unfamiliar micro, which some research showed to be a Taiwanese PIC clone! While PICs are great for development, I think foreign manufacturers will have a significant cost advantage when volumes get high enough.

-- Jim McGinnis

yes well phillips make 8051 so you would expect that.