Mobile handset IC market forecast to increase through next three years

Strong double-digit growth rates in the mobile handset IC market were logged in 2013 and 2014 but only a 2% increase was registered in 2015. Despite the expected increase of 4% in 2016, the 2015-2019 total mobile phone IC market CAGR is forecast to be 6.7%, 3.0 points higher than the 3.7% CAGR forecast for the total IC market during this same time.  The $94.3bn 2019 mobile phone IC market is forecast to be about 30% higher than the level registered in 2015.

In 2015, the IC product segment that had the highest average content per mobile phone was the MPU category ($9.92), which includes the application processors used in smartphones.  The second highest was the application specific logic segment, which had an average $8.55 of IC content per mobile handset.

In total, there was an average of $38.78 worth of ICs in a 2015 mobile handset. DRAM memory held 59% ($12.3bn) of the total mobile phone memory market in 2015, with NAND flash representing most of the remainder of the market. The $21.0bn mobile phone memory market in 2015 was driven by the surge in shipments of memory-rich high-end smartphones and the 6% increase in the mobile phone DRAM market.

The average analogue content in a mobile phone increased in 2015 to $6.64 while the total mobile phone analogue IC market increased by 8%, six points better than the 2% growth rate experienced by the total 2015 analogue IC market.  Application specific analogue, mostly comprised of mixed-signal devices, represented about 83% of the total $12.5bn 2015 mobile handset analogue IC market.

In 2019, as the market shifts more toward low-end smartphones, the mobile phone MPU market is expected to represent 23% of the total mobile phone IC market, down two points from 26% in 2015.  Moreover, the mobile phone DRAM memory market in 2019 is forecast to reach $19.9bn and be more than two times larger than the total flash mobile phone IC market ($9.5bn) in that year.  In contrast to the high-growth mobile phone DRAM market, the 2019 mobile phone DSP market is forecast to be less than $0.1bn, down from $1.3bn in 2012.