Is the IP market expected to decline by 2020?

By SemiWiki

October 19, 2015

To answer this question, I will share the results about Interface IP, more precisely the Top 5. The Top 5 protocols, USB, PCIe, Ethernet, DDRn and MIPI, are part of the interface IP market and each of them has been characterized by very strong growth rate. If you compute actual numbers for 2010 to 2014, it results to a Cumulated Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14%.

What does it means for IP vendors? Simply that the revenue generated by license sales has doubled, passing from $180M in 2010 to $360M in 2014. Please note that these standard based IP business is based on a model calling for upfront license fees and excluding royalties, with the notable exception of Rambus, not included in the research.

Should we expect this IP business to stay flat or even decline as it was claimed during DAC 2015 introduction speech (*)? If you look at numbers reported by EDAC for Q2’15, you notice that the IP market four-quarter moving average increased by 22.1%, when the same metric for the CAE market was… minus 0.3%.

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