SoC market estimated to hit $72B by 2021

Transparency Market Research has released a report indicating that the SoC market was valued at $35.95 billion in 2014 and is predicted to approach $71.98 billion by 2021, growing at a CAGR of 10.5 per cent from 2015 to 2021.

Increase in the demand of smarter and power efficient electronic devices, declining cost per function of IC and increasing demand for multi-core technologies and embedded graphics are the major driving factors for the SoC market. SoCs are being used by all smart electronic devices currently such as smartphones, wireless communication equipment, automotive body electronics and electrocardiogram (ECG) telemetry devices. The increasing demand for energy efficient devices has led to development of newer SoCs that are smaller, functions faster than their predecessors and even consumes much lesser power. Moreover, the increased demand for multi-core technologies and embedded graphics has led to development of advanced SoCs having such features. With further advancements of SoC technologies and increased manifestation of Moore's law, the global SoC market is expected to grow at a decent rate during the forecast period from 2015 to 2021.

By application, market is divided into four segments: telecommunication, consumer electronics, automotive and others. In 2014, consumer electronics devices were the largest usage section of SoC, and are expected to remain same through the forecast period. The growth is attributed due to increase in advancement of smart consumer electronic devices such as smartphones, smart watches and tablets in term of features. Also, increasing demand for reduction in power consumption of consumer electronic devices globally helps in the growth of development of newer chip-scale configurations.

The global SoC market has been segmented into four regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the world (RoW). APAC held the largest market share in 2014, by device usage. Rapid adoption of smart consumer electronics, increase in number of internet users and increased acceptance of connected devices are primarily driving the demand of SoC in APAC.

Some of the major players in the market are Apple (US), Broadcom (US), Freescale Semiconductor (US), Infineon Technologies (Germany), Intel (US), Qualcomm (U.S.), Samsung (South Korea.), STMicroelectronics (Switzerland), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (Taiwan), Toshiba (Japan) and MediaTek (Taiwan).