NXP & Freescale merger set to dominate OE automotive sector

Semicast’s OE automotive semiconductor vendor share analysis ranks Renesas Electronics as the leading supplier in 2014, with an estimated market share of 10.3%. Renesas continues to hold the lead over Infineon Technologies, the second largest vendor, which in 2014 had an estimated market share of 9.2%. STMicroelectronics is judged to have been the third largest supplier of semiconductors to the OE automotive sector in 2014, with a market share of 7.3%, ahead of Freescale on 7.1% and NXP on 6.3%. Robert Bosch and Texas Instruments were the only other vendors with an estimated market share of 5% or more in this sector in 2014.

NXP and Freescale announced plans to merge at the beginning of March, an event which will create the largest automotive semiconductor manufacturer in 2015. In 2014 the market share of 13.4% would have placed the combined business comfortably ahead of Renesas, with a similar result also in 2013.

Colin Barnden, Principal Analyst and study author, Semicast Research, commented: “Semicast endorses the merger which, from an automotive perspective, has substantial benefits; NXP is a leading player in automotive RF, high performance mixed signal, MOSFETs and DSPs, with Freescale’s strengths in MCUs, PMICs and sensors.”