ROUSSET, France — STMicroelectronics is sprinting toward the winner’s circle in microcontrollers, near field communications (NFC) chips and sensors, while NXP Semiconductors is hobbled by its pending acquisition by Qualcomm.
ST, which just announced its Q2 financial results with net revenues of $1.92 billion, up 12.9 percent year over year, is invigorated.
Although ST remains mum about any upcoming design wins, the positive glow at the Franco-Italian company today is fueled by growing speculation among market analysts that ST’s time of flight (ToF) imaging sensors and NFC chips are getting designed into leading smartphones.
In a sharp contrast to its shrinkage in the last decade, ST is today regaining its confidence. It has narrowed its product portfolio, identified strengths, capitalized on its fabs, and is quietly expanding its market share in key product segments such as MCUs.
Gone are the days of responding to bad news — the end of an ST-Ericsson joint venture (2011) and exiting the digital set-top box chip business (late 2015). “Today, we are working in a planning mode rather than reacting,” said Claude Dardanne, executive vice president and general manager of ST’s Microcontrollers and Digital ICs Group (MDG), in a recent exclusive interview with EE Times.
Claude Dardanne, ST's executive vice president (photo: EE Times)
As ST sees it, one of the bright spots in recent years is its MCU business.
NXP, which merged with Freescale two years ago, continues to rule the market as the world’s largest automotive MCU supplier. But in mass-market MCUs, excluding automotive, ST, whose share was only 2.9 percent 10 years ago, has expanded its footprint to 16 percent, according to Dardanne.
Unlike others who have recently grown by acquisition (NXP buying Freescale in late 2015, Microchip acquiring Atmel in 2016), ST has expanded its MCU presence organically.
ST’s 32-bit MCU Hail Mary In 2007, ST made a strategic decision to “stop all activities on the development of 8-bit MCU,” explained Dardanne. ST chose to solidify its MCU development on 32-bit MCU with STM32. “We took a risk.”
More important, ST decided to address the MCU market — including those of 16-bit and below by a single family of 32-bit MCUs. The idea was “a single platform that encompasses the entire microcontroller market,” said Daniel Colonna, marketing director for microcontroller division at the MDG group of ST. “After all, most customers change their MCU suppliers every time when they go to the next generation MCUs. So why wouldn’t we start with 32-bit MCU?”
After the 2007 launch of STM32 based on Cortex-MX running at 72MHz, ST scored $7 million in 32-bit MCU revenue in 2008. By 2009, the number was $32 million, illustrating the embedded market’s appetite for 32-bit MCUs.
The real break for ST in MCUs was the launch of an entry-cost, ultra-low power STM32L0 in 2013, pitched as the first “32-bit MCU at 32 cents.” This opened the door to push 32-bit MCUs to a larger market of 16-bit and below. Dardanne said ST didn’t lower the price [to 32 cents] in order to break into the 16-bit market. “It’s not my style. Margin is important.” But by making the entry product in a specific package so cheaply, “We brought the 32-bit MCU down to the same level of 16-bit MCU,” he said.
One might call ST’s 2007 move to go all the way to 32-bit either “visionary” or a “Hail Mary.” ST was gambling at a time when the rest of the world thought 8-bit and 16-bit were more than adequate to meet the embedded market’s demand.
Dardanne acknowledged, “It was the only option we had then.” ST had a steep hill to climb against much more formidable 8-bit and 16-bit MCU players in the MCU market. He noted, “We had to do something different because our goal was to become a leader not a follower.”
(Source: IHS Markit)
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Tom Hackenberg, principal analyst for embedded processors at IHS Markit, told EE Times that he can confirm that ST has gained in market share overall and in 32-bit MCUs.
ST to move onto 64-bit MCUs
ST won’t be resting on its laurels with 32-bit MCUs. “We need to keep moving,” Dardanne said.
During the interview, ST disclosed plans to launch a 64-bit MCU in 2018. “We are working very closely with ARM for this,” he noted.
Next page: Number 3 in MCU ranking?