We launched EE Times-Asia's Analog section at the start of the year, and timing couldn't have been more right. Although consolidation may be one of the politically correct terms, the ongoing action in the analog chip segment seems to be more than that.

A flurry of activity could somehow transform the analog realm this year. Take analog chipmaker Maxim Integrated Products Inc. for instance.

In May 2007, the company announced that it would stop developing high-speed, high-resolution ADCs. According to company sources, Maxim had seen standalone high-speed, high-resolution ADCs as having limited market size opportunity. Then, Maxim joined the fab-lite bandwagon by signing an IC manufacturing deal with Seiko Epson Corp., who would produce Maxim's power and battery management products in its 200mm fab in Sakata, Japan.

Then in August, the company bought storage products business from Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. According to the terms of the deal, Maxim would acquire serial attached SCSI, serial ATA expander product segments, enclosure and baseboard management devices, and other certain assets of Vitesse's Storage Products Division.

And just last month, Maxim announced that it would taper off and eventually close its wafer fab in Dallas, Texas. The company would also exit the handset RF transceiver product line.

Interesting segment
Despite all its complexities, analog is an interesting place. The predicaments about the end of the road for analog have periodically surfaced.

With the advent of DTV, for example, many pundits saw the end of analog business. On the contrary, the number of analog components has increased in DTV sets.

Same goes for high-end 3G cellphones. In a teardown analysis of Nokia's N95 3G handset titled "Hot 3G phone owes debt to analog," Portelligent Inc.'s president, David Carey, said that despite the use of sophisticated processors, analog devices are still at the heart of the handset's root functionality.

Bright spots
Early this decade when DSPs were at full bloom, some pundits even predicted that DSP chips could banish the analog part entirely. Fast forward to 2008, DSPs still hold their ground, but we are seeing analog resurgence.

The analog market had been going strong since 2002 until it went on a brief slump in 2007. Now, many industry observers see a good year in store for the analog business. The bright spots include data converters and power management devices. No wonder Texas Instruments Inc. is mounting a data converter offense by launching a new family of high-speed, low-power ADCs.

According to market research firm IC Insights, sales of standard analog IC will reach $18.2 billion in 2011, while application-specific analog revenues will total $31.7 billion that same year.

The analog world seems headed for high-growth opportunity areas, with demand coming from portable consumer electronics, 3G phones and network upgrades. Any portable electronic product, for instance, needs improvement in battery management. Moreover, higher processing performance would require faster data conversion and greater precision in amplification.

We are committed to providing you with valuable analog information relevant to the design scene in Asia. This includes highly analytical perspective stories on the latest analog design activities, how-to articles on practical design issues and opinion articles from industry experts.

Your feedback on how we can improve the content of the Analog section is most welcome. You can e-mail your feedback at mkamran@eetasia.com.

Back to top