Passive components and power gate driver industry: a shakeup of the legacy players

The market research and strategy consulting company Yole Intelligence, part of Yole Group has developed comprehensive and accurate power electronics expertise for over ten years. All year long, Yole’s analysts deliver significant analyses, including technology and market reports and teardowns.
Today, Yole’s power electronics team releases two complementary reports:

Yole’s analysts see a clear trend among passive components companies to diversify their businesses and regional portfolios. Many passive component suppliers are involved in more than one component. Many passive component companies have a presence and manufacturing capacities in several countries. Manufacturing in countries like China, India, and Latin America incurs lower costs than in Europe or Japan. Because of the growing demand, Yole expects mergers and acquisitions among passive component companies will continue in the coming years, aiming to add new product lines, increase profitability, access more customers, or eliminate competition.

Power transistors are the key elements of power conversion devices, such as traction inverters in electric vehicles, onboard chargers, solar inverters, etc. However, even the best power transistor cannot work alone. Other components must “drive” and “accompany” power transistors within the power converter assembly to ensure their operation and enable maximum benefits from their technology.

Both passive components and gate drivers are essential components of power electronic systems. A gate driver is a power amplifier that accepts a low-power input from a controller IC and produces a high-current drive input for the gate of a high-power transistor, meaning IGBTs and MOSFETs based on silicon, GaN, or SiC technologies. Passive components – including inductors, capacitors, and resistors – are used in smart combinations with active devices in any inverter. Their role is to dissipate, store, and release energy and so enable energy conversion. Therefore, both types of elements are crucial for the converter’s behavior. For all these reasons, Yole’s power electronics team investigated this field and highlighted their results within these two dedicated reports.

Although a large portion of power devices are sold in China, the gate driver market is still dominated by leading international players. However, with the already imminent growth of the country’s electric vehicle market, local companies could be carving out a niche for themselves as major suppliers and could be of concern to current market leaders. Indeed, they seem to have decided to make the leap to new galvanic isolation technologies that allow their products’ use in the most advanced and promising applications.

Yole’s power electronics invite you to follow the power electronics industry and the strategy of the power electronics players on i-Micronews. Stay tuned!