Market Overview

The Mobile Phone Semiconductor Market was valued at USD 44.931 billion in 2019?and is expected to reach USD 69.303 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 7.49% over the forecast period 2020?- 2025. The market for the semiconductors that power wireless communications such as mobile phones are undergoing dramatic changes, which is growing at a rate of more than 25% annually which is further expected to grow with the introduction of 5G technology and growth in emerging markets. Today, mobile application processors operate at 10 to 15 percent of a typical laptop’s computing power, yet that gap is rapidly narrowing as smartphones run applications from mobile video to mobile games, and their energy consumption is lower than a laptop’s by a factor of 10 to 30 times. Owing to the introduction of LTE - or 4G, the use of the mobile Internet has created strong pull, as a result, LTE technology offering much-needed transmission bandwidth for mobile data, catering to the consumer need for fast connectivity on high-end smartphones, as a result, both handset original equipment manufacturers and telecommunications operators are expected to migrate to LTE as early as possible to take advantage of its greater speed and data capacity, as a result driving the market growth.

  • In addition, demand from the communications, data processing, and smartphone sectors will largely drive this market. Special-purpose application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and application-specific signal processor (ASSP) logic chips will make up the vast majority of the total market over the forecast period. Global mobile data traffic will increase seven-fold between 2017 and 2022, growing at a CAGR of 46% from 2017 to 2022, would reach 77.5 exabytes per month by 2022 (Cisco Systems, 2019) - a trend largely attributable to the rapid growth in the mobile video. In consequence, mobile operators will find it increasingly difficult to provide the bandwidth requested by customers. Furthermore, the spectral efficiency of mobile networks is reaching its physical limits. As a result of this architecture change, an increasing share of the integration work is likely done by baseband manufacturers rather than by handset makers.
  • In terms of growth, the United States has the fastest growth rate due to the rise of DRAM and high demand for MCUs, especially in the storage market. This market will continue to be the main contributor to revenues for the semiconductor industry in APAC. The Asia Pacific region has profited from a boom in the memory market as the rising price of memory generated great revenue. Mobile phone semiconductor production will continue to be centered in China. China has an ever-increasing demand for mobile phone semiconductors and is the world’s largest purchaser and importer of chips due to its manufacturing prowess. Developing and strengthening the industry is a high priority of the Chinese government, with many budding companies in the early startup phase.



Scope of the Report

Mobile phones represent the most comprehensive application for the semiconductor market by revenue, but the market is saturating. The maturing of the mobile revolution and the strong growth opportunity presented by IoT are attracting the interests of many chipmakers.

Key Market Trends

Memory to Drive the Mobile Phone Semiconductor Market by Component Type

  • A large portion of the growth in this segment will be driven by ongoing technological advancements such as cloud computing and virtual reality in end-devices such as smartphones. Sharply higher average selling prices (ASPs) for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and NAND flash chips are also playing a substantial role in generating revenues.
  • In general, the expected price decreases would be offset by new capacity for flash memory and for DRAM, which would result in a better balance of supply and demand for these devices to support more latest applications such as enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs), augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, graphics, and other complex, real-time workload functions.
  • However, Samsung’s massive capital spending on its semiconductor division has created overcapacity in the memory market, the 3D NAND flash market in particular. The overcapacity will lead to excess supplies in the market, which will lower the market price for memory. As a result, revenues for these chips will drop in the later part of 2019, adversely affecting the entire semiconductor market.



Asia-Pacific to Hold a Dominant Position in the Mobile Phone Semiconductor Market

  • The Asia Pacific region has profited from a growth in the memory market as the increasing price of memory generated large revenue. The integrated circuit (IC) industry in China developed by more than 25%, making a significant contribution to Asia-Pacific. Korean mobile phone semiconductor industry growth depends largely on IC suppliers, especially in the memory chip market.
  • Moreover, the mobile phone semiconductor industry in Taiwan is based on the foundry model. Nevertheless, price fluctuations have wrecked many foundries. This has assisted vendors in Taiwan to transfer some foundries into Mainland China and re-prioritize to concentrate on IC design in order to counter the price decline.
  • In East Asia, Japan has held a preeminent position in the mobile phone semiconductor R&D and materials industry, with semiconductor giants including Sony, Toshiba, and Renesas. Taiwan and South Korea are strong in memory and foundry, individually. South Korea leads in NAND and DRAM and has several top semiconductor companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix, largely due to government support.
  • In terms of NAND, it is increasingly challenging for new players to participate in the competition due to the requisite accumulation of technical know-how. However, South Korea also has challenges. The price of DRAM is declining and exports are weakening. Therefore, South Korean semiconductor vendors are devoting themselves to equipment and materials research as they attempt to expand into other areas to tilt away from heavy importance on memory.



Competitive Landscape

The Mobile Phone Semiconductor Market is a highly fragmented market, dominated by several major players. Various acquisitions and collaboration of large companies have taken place and are expected to take place shortly which focuses on innovation. Some of the key players in the market are Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. These companies are leveraging strategic collaborative initiatives to increase their market share and increase their profitability.

  • July 2019 - MediaTek announced the launch of its Helio G90 series chipsets with Helio G90 & G90T exclusively designed to be the core of an incredible smartphone gaming experience. The Helio G90 Series combines the latest CPU and GPU cores with ultra-fast memory and massive AI performance to deliver fast, fluid action. And for even more gaming power, the MediaTek Helio G90 series is paired with MediaTek’s HyperEngine game technology that tunes the entire smartphone for the greatest gaming experience possible.
  • May 2019 - Arm Limited announced the launch of its Arm Mali-D77 display processor which delivers superior VR performance for head-mounted displays (HMD), eliminating motion sickness and optimized for 3K120, achieving more than 40% system bandwidth savings, 12% power savings for VR workloads, enabling development of smaller, lighter, more comfortable untethered VR devices, scaling from HMDs to standard premium mobile displays.



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