Digital power market gets charged up!

EL SEGUNDO, USA: Having overcome some fundamental hurdles, suppliers of digital power semiconductors have aligned behind Digital Controllers of Power (DCPs), setting the stage for a nearly seven-fold rise in revenue by 2013, according to iSuppli Corp.

Global sales of digital power semiconductors are set to increase to $821 million in 2013, up from $127 million in 2008.

The digital power semiconductor market consists of two types of products: Digital Power Managers (DPMs) and DCPs. While DPMs currently dominate the market, DCPs will experience more rapid growth in the coming years. Global revenue from shipments of DCPs are set to rise to $236 million in 2013, up from just $16 million in 2008.

The biggest growth in demand for digital power semiconductors will be driven by high-end servers as well as datacom and telecom equipment. By the year 2011, growth is expected to pick up in the lower-end compute markets such as notebook PCs and graphic cards.

The figure presents iSuppli’s forecast of global power-management revenue for DCPs and DPMs.Source: iSuppli, USA

“Over the past five years, the digital power chip market has made extraordinary advances,” said Marijana Vukicevic, senior analyst for power management at iSuppli. “These include power-stage integration, the mixing of digital circuitry with analog and the arrival of bus communication capabilities in the form of PMBus and I2C. All these developments have established the path for a dominant technology: DCP.”

DPMs are devices that use digital information to manage the overall functioning of the power system and the power supplies within it. With DPMs, digital signals are used for communication to, and from, the power supplies in order to monitor and manage a number of tasks, including power-up, sequencing, load sharing and balancing, fault conditions, hot swapping and maintenance issues.

DCPs are controllers that use digital techniques to control the power-switching functions within a power supply unit. In its most theoretical form, this means performing the analog-to-digital conversion as early as possible, so that all feedback and control functions in the supply are processed in the digital domain.

Some major players in the semiconductor industry are jockeying for position in the DCP market via the acquisition and purchase of assets.

For one, Infineon Technologies AG in 2008 purchased Primarion Inc., which offers DCP products. Also in 2008, Exar purchased Fyrestorm Inc.’s Intellectual Property (IP) related to DCP. In the same year, Intersil Corp. acquired Zilker Labs, which offers DCP products as well.

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) in early 2009 acquired CICLON Semiconductor Device Corp., which offers a fast and efficient power MOSFET product line that could be integrated with TI’s DCP products and improve system efficiency tremendously.

In other developments, Linear Technology, Infineon, Texas Instruments and Powervation licensed Power-One Inc.’s digital power patents, which relate to digital power technology for use in DCP products. Power-One’s position in DCP was solidified by its patent litigation victory over Emerson Network Power in the area of systems-level communication in point-of-load applications.

OLED shipments for primary cell-phone displays to rise eightfold by 2015

EL SEGUNDO, USA: Triggered by the introduction this year of a wave of cell phones equipped with main displays using Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode (AM-OLED) technology, the global market for such screens is set to explode in the coming years, according to iSuppli Corp.

Shipments of OLED displays for the main screens of cell phones are expected to rise by a factor of eight from 2009 to 2015. Global shipments of OLED main cell phone displays will rise to 178 million units in 2015, up from 22.2 million in 2009.

The figure presents iSuppli’s forecast of global shipments of OLED displays for cell-phone main displays.

iSuppli: Global Shipment Forecast of OLED Displays for Use as Main Displays in Mobile Handsets (Thousands of Units)Source: iSuppli, Sept. 2009

“AM-OLEDs deliver superior-quality images compared to conventional LCDs, especially in terms of contrast and response times,” said Vinita Jakhanwal, principal analyst, small/medium displays, for iSuppli.

“They also consume less power, extending battery life. With smart phones increasingly being used by consumers as their primary Internet-access devices, the ubiquity and extended operation times yielded by AM-OLEDs make them an attractive choice for such cell phones.”

Despite this growth, OLEDs will still only account for a small percentage of total main mobile-handset displays in the coming years, rising to 6 percent of total unit shipments in 2013, up from 2 percent in 2009. The only factors limiting greater penetration is the fact that the AM- OLED market has only a couple of suppliers and a limited number of factories.

Nokia’s new N85 represents the new breed of handsets with relatively large OLED primary displays arriving in the market. The N85 sports a 2.6-inch diagonal AM-OLED with a pixel format of 240 by 320. An iSuppli teardown of the N85 estimates the cost of the AM-OLED at $7.05, compared to $6.50 for an LCD of equivalent size and resolution.

Other new phones equipped with AM-OLED main displays include Samsung’s Impression and i8000 Omnia II.

While some cell phones with OLEDs have been introduced in the past, Jakhanwal said these mainly have taken the form of displays employing Passive-Matrix (PM-OLED) technology and working as secondary screens, due to the inherent size and resolution limitations of PM-OLED displays.

Pixel formats of QVGA, wQVGA and higher can be achieved in AM-OLEDs, making them suitable for larger main displays in mobile phones, Jakhanwal added, and recent price reductions as well as yield improvements have made AM-OLEDs economical in this application.

Because of this, main cell phone displays will surpass secondary screens as the highest-volume application for OLEDs starting in 2010, and will maintain their lead through 2015.

Compared to the overall market dominated by LCD technology, OLEDs for main cell-phone displays represent an attractive growth opportunity. Global unit shipments of OLEDs for the main displays of cell phones will rise at a 41.4 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 2009 to 2015, compared to 8 percent for 2009 to 2013 for all types of displays for handsets.

In addition to their use in smartphones, AM-OLEDs can find strong acceptance as 2.2-inch to 2.6-inch QVGA main displays for conventional cell phones, especially if volumes and prices comparable to LCDs can be obtained.

And beyond the other allures offered by OLED, the technology is more environmentally sustainable compared to that of conventional LCDs.

“OLEDs offer a low-power-consumption solution to flat-panel displays, especially when compared to LCDs, without compromising picture quality,” Jakhanwal noted. “OLEDs also have fewer sub-components and contain no mercury or other heavy metals that require special handling, making them easier to recycle.”