Some interesting perspective on the USB market:
SAN JOSE, California…March 24, 2000 -- Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:CY) today announced that it recently shipped its 50-millionth universal serial bus (USB) microcontroller. USB controller chips connect PCs and their peripherals with "plug-and-play" simplicity and compatibility. Cypress reached the 50-million-unit milestone in just three years and expects to reach the 100-million-unit mark late this year.
Drawing on a variety of implementation schemes, architectures, and feature sets, Cypress offers a microcontroller for virtually every USB peripheral, from low-speed devices such as mice, keyboards, and joysticks, to full-speed hubs, to high-speed modems, scanners and digital cameras.
With an installed base of 250 million PCs, Dataquest predicts that the number of USB-enabled PCs will grow to 700 million by the end of 2003. Cypress anticipates that its USB sales will triple this year to around $100 million. Cypress also expects to sample controllers in the third quarter for the emerging USB 2.0 standard, a specification with target speeds up to 480 Mbps
December 2, 1999 - Market research firm DataQuest (San Jose) estimates that 27 million USB peripheral chips will ship in 1999, skyrocketing to 85.5 million next year (225% growth). DataQuest sees the market growing to almost 500 million units in 2003. Other market observers, including financial analyst SG Cowen, believe the DataQuest figures may underestimate the size of the market, currently and in the future.
Cypress is the market-share leader in USB, having shipped more than 20 million units. According to market researcher Cahners In-Stat (Scottsdale, Ariz.), Cypress has shipped more than half of all USB peripheral controllers.
USB market estimates do not typically include the application- and market-expanding possibilities of USB 2.0, which has a target speed of 480 Mbits/second, as defined by the USB 2.0 Promoter Group. Under its recent licensing agreement with Intel-a key driver of USB standards-Cypress gained access to technology that will facilitate early delivery of USB 2.0 products. Regards, pmcw |
