Automotive IC market expectations predict new high

14th June 2018

Mick Elliott

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Consumer demand and government mandates for electronic systems that improve vehicle performance, that add comfort and convenience, and that warn, detect, and take corrective measures to keep drivers safe and alert are being added to new cars each year. This system growth, along with rising prices for memory components within them, are expected to raise the automotive IC market 18.5% this year to a new record high of $32.3bn, surpassing last year’s record of $27.2bn.

These figures will feature in the soon to be released Update to the IC Market Drivers 2018 report published by market research company IC Insights. If the forecast holds, it would mark the third consecutive year of double-digit growth for the automotive IC market.

There have been some ups and downs in the automotive IC market in the past few years. IC Insights reports growth of 11.4% in 2014 – excellent, followed by a decline of 2.5% in 2015 – not so good.

On the rebound 2016 sales rose 10.6% growth.

IC Insights notes that the sales decline experienced in 2015 was primarily the result of falling ASPs across all the key automotive IC product categories—microcontrollers, analogue ICs, DRAM, flash, and general- and special-purpose logic ICs, which offset steady unit growth for automotive ICs that year.

Looking longer-term IC Insights’ updated automotive IC market forecast shows the market growing to $43.6bn in 2021, which represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.5% from 2017 to 2021, highest among the six major end-use applications.

Industrial driven by IoT applications is set to grow 8.1% and consumer by 6.8%.

IC Insights said, collectively, automotive ICs are forecast to account for only about 7.5% of the total IC market in 2018, although that share is forecast to increase to 9.3% in 2021.

In contrast Analogue ICs—both general-purpose analogue and application-specific automotive analogue—are expected to account for 45% of the 2018 automotive IC market, with MCUs capturing 23% share.