Auto semi faces growth brakes

Hit hard by the current economic crisis, the automotive industry has been suffering steep declines in sales. The same is true for the worldwide automotive semiconductor market, which saw sales reached just over $20 billion in 2008, and for 2009, Databeans expects a reduction of 25 percent with recovery back to the $20 billion level by 2012.

This recovery, notes the market research firm, will be driven by the increasing electronic content in vehicles and the continuing support for R&D. Databeans estimates that the percentage of electronic content in vehicles reached 13 percent, thus for a vehicle with a production value of $12,700, $1,646 worth of electronics are integrated. This year, that percentage is expected to climb to 13.5 and then to 14.8 by 2012. Benefiting primarily from this rise will be the suppliers of microcontrollers, analog and sensors.

Key players in the $20 billion automotive semiconductor market

Players include Freescale Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Renesas Technology, and Bosch. Freescale continues to remain the market share leader in automotive semiconductor products with 9 percent share of the $20 billion automotive semiconductor market followed by large analog and sensor players, Infineon and ST.