January 26, 2009
Freescale Leads Communications Processor Market: IDC
By Narayan Bhat, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Analyst firm IDC has ranked Freescale Semiconductor at the number one slot in the communication processor market, saying the Austin, Texas-based chipmaker commands 52 percent of the market share as compared to 25 percent which its nearest competitor holds.
The communications processor space, according to IDC (News - Alert), will outperform other networking silicon categories in the years ahead despite a challenging economic condition.
Freescale has credited its flagship PowerQUICC product line with its increasing success in the semiconductor business.
Last year, Freescale reinforced its leadership position by unveiling a new brand of multicore communications platforms designed to enable the next era of networking.
“Our studies show that Freescale remains the longstanding leader in the communications processor market,” said Aileen Arcilla, senior semiconductor research analyst for IDC.
“Freescale continues to leverage the popularity of PowerQUICC processors with the industry’s leading equipment manufacturers and their network carrier customers and will seek to maintain its leadership with the forthcoming QorIQ line of multicore devices. In 2009 and beyond, Freescale and its competitors will need to monitor the acceptance of multicore as they all attempt to gain market share in one of the very few growing semiconductor market segments.”
IDC also predicted that carriers will continue to replace legacy infrastructure to support the growing volume and varying mix of network traffic.
IDC’s report titled “Worldwide Telecom/Datacom Semiconductor Vendor Share” examines application-specific semiconductors for datacom/telecom equipment markets and includes rankings for communications processors.
The communications market is poised to innovate in the years ahead, said Lisa Su, Freescale’s senior vice president and general manager (Networking and Multimedia Group), adding that the company will continue to press ahead with advanced technology and optimized solutions based on PowerQUICC and QorIQ multicore platforms.
Freescale established the communications processor market in 1989 by delivering the industry's first multi-protocol microprocessor, and has since shipped more than 185 million communications processor units. These devices are used in routers, switches, digital line cards, wireless LAN access/aggregation points, unified threat management (UTM) appliances, voice over IP (VoIP) equipment as well as printer, high-end imaging and storage applications.
Narayan Bhat is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Narayan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
