Mobility trends: What’s ahead for automotive semiconductors
By Stefan Burghardt, Seunghyuk Choi, and Florian Weig
Article - April 2017
New mobility trends are diversifying demand for automotive semiconductors. Here’s what companies need to know about new opportunities.
Consumers who arrived in Las Vegas for the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show—one of the premiere exhibitions of new technologies for the general public—might have wondered if they were at an auto show. This annual conference, which attracts leading high-tech companies across sectors, featured more than 500 exhibits on mobility solutions for cars. Many global automotive OEMs and automotive suppliers participated, introducing innovative sensors, mapping applications, connectivity platforms, and other new technologies. These improvements, combined with the expansion of electric vehicles (EVs), will alter mobility—the market that includes public and private transport, as well as the transportation of goods. In the new environment, a car’s electronic components and functionalities—already an important buying consideration—may become the feature that differentiates it from the crowd.
Semiconductors have enabled most of the recent innovations in automotive technology, including vision-based, enhanced graphics processing units (GPUs) and application processors, sensors, and DRAM and NAND flash. As cars become even more complex, demand for automotive semiconductors will continue to rise steadily and provide a major new long-term growth engine.
With many semiconductor companies aggressively pursuing automotive opportunities and forming partnerships along the value chain, players that move more slowly might be left behind. This article discusses three topics that all semiconductor companies must consider as they prepare for the future: trends shaping the automotive landscape, factors that affect demand for automotive semiconductors, and major strategic issues that players must address as they adapt to the evolving market.
The evolving automotive market
The automotive market has seldom experienced so many simultaneous disruptions. In the past few years, we have seen various technologies increasingly incorporated into the mass production of cars, including matrix LED lights, enhanced lidar sensors—those that use lasers to measure distance to a target—and better camera-based sensors. We have also seen improvements in 3-D mapping applications, EV batteries, and augmented-reality technologies, such as heads-up displays. And 5G networks—the next generation of mobility solutions—could soon be available. On the customer side, we are seeing new preferences and attitudes toward cars—for instance, a decrease in the number of consumers who consider vehicle ownership important.
In a 2016 McKinsey report, Automotive revolution—perspective towards 2030, we reviewed the major forces shaping the industry, focusing on four that we deemed particularly important.
continues at mckinsey.com |
