During the last quarter, estimated $8.8 billion worth of revenue was generated from chips consumed in various communications equipment including Broadband, VoIP, Optical Networking, Mobiles and 802.11x technologies. In terms of volume around 812 million units of semiconductor materials (ICs, SoCs, ASSPs, etc) were shipped.
Texas Instruments leads the market with earnings of around $1.63 billion during 2Q07 which represents about 18.5% share of the total market. Other leaders in the communication chips market include Freescale, ST Microelectronics, Broadcom and Qualcomm.
Broadband is the number one contributor of revenues for communication chips market while in terms of units, cellular consumes the maximum. For Broadband and Optical Networking chips, IPTV is expected to play as a catalyst.
In case of cellular chips, 3G services and Ultra Low Cost handsets are set to further drive the new demand. 802.11x chip market is likely to gain momentum as regulators open spectrum for WiMAX. WiMAX is further expected to grow with service providers initiating work on Mobile WiMAX services.
For Bluetooth chip market, embedding Bluetooth capabilities into lower end mobile handsets, MP3 players, PMPs and mobile accessories is a source of new demand. VoIP on the other hand is consistently growing and large quantities of VoIP equipment are being deployed in the core telecom networks as well as the edge in form of CPE.