Semiconductor IP News and Trends Blog

APAC Surges Ahead in Global IP Market

A recent report by Technavio Insights confirms strong growth in IP usage and development in Asian countries. What will this mean to the future of chip design?

It has been a notable year for the semiconductor intellectual property (IP) industry. Technavio Insights, research platform of Infiniti Research, expects the global semiconductor IP market to grow at 7.75 percent year-over-year until FY2014. This growth is traced to continuous advancement in chips and electronic devices, in addition to demands in wireless, analog and optical technologies.

Figure: Total revenue for the global semiconductor IP market is driven by three key regions: the Americas, the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Asia Pacific (APAC) regions. (Courtesy of TechNavio Analysis)

The birthplace of the world’s semiconductor industry – the Americas – continues to contribute the largest share of total revenue for the global IP industry.  TechNavio reports that most of the IP vendors in the EMEA region cater to customers either in the US or in the APAC region. This is why the EMEA region contributes only 26 percent to the overall global revenue.

Despite its relative delay into the semiconductor market, the APCA region has already outgrown the EMEA area in terms of market share. A rapidly increase in IP related activities have spurred this growth in the APAC region, as have the shifting of R&D centers from the US and Europe to minimize production costs.

Strong growth in the Asian IP market is one of the reasons for the introduction of major Chipestimate.com IP portals in Japan and China. These portals will also make local Asian IP available for global consumption in the design of future chips. Such trends will lend an interesting twist to questions of IP security, theft, quality and verification. All of which will make for interesting future blogs!