Market and Technology Trends
Thin-Film Integrated Passive Devices 2020
By Yole Intelligence —
5G and 3D integration are pushing the IPD market towards further growth.
What's new:
- Covid 19’s impact on general market forecasts
- Focus on market trends, IPD growth relays, and market potential
Table of contents 3
Report scope 4
Report methodology 6
What we got right, what we got wrong 9
Executive summary 10
Market forecasts 30
- Methodology
- Total market forecasts
- Market trends
- Wafer starts, units, revenue (by market, applications, devices)
Market trends 41
- Definitions
- Applications and technologies
- EMI & off-the-shelf RF IPD
- Custom RF IPD
- Embedded RF IPD
- Other RF IPD
- General trend
Market share and supply chain 68
- Key players and manufacturers per region
- Key players per application and technology type
- Ecosystem analysis, business models, players’ strategy, supply chain analysis
Technology trends 75
- Innovation in IPD
- Technologies comparison
- Technologies comparison
- Overview of key components
Outlook 111
- Conclusions / incl. 2 – 3-page takeaway
- What is coming next? What could happen?
- Key parameters to look at? Metrics?
- Other sub-title
THE IPD MARKET WILL GROW WITH A 2019-2025 6.5% CAGR
Despite offering unique features, thin-film IPD technology shows limited market penetration in the world of passives. However, even a low share in this enormous industry can represent significant results. Over time, thin-film IPD have managed to penetrate a few applications and find growth relays. The main market today, and one that shows strong growth, is the custom RF IPD featured in RF modules, especially for future 5G applications. These are filters for large frequency bands and lumped-element circuits for impedance matching, for example. This market is expected to see an 8.2% CAGR2019 – 2025, surpassing $360M in 2025. The other large-value market is off-the-shelf IPD used for EMI shielding in stringent applications or for basic RF operations like baluns or filtering. This market will represent $195M in 2025, with a 3.15% CAGR 2019 – 2025.
After custom RF IPD, today’s most active market is embedded decoupling capacitance in application processors, implemented thanks to advanced 3D integration. This is a prospective high indirect-value market. IPD themselves will not represent a huge part of the cost, but their implementation matters in the choice of the foundry service provider, thus becoming a strategic technology for component manufacturers. This market should grow to $21.7M in 2025, with a 15.2% CAGR 2019 – 2025. The last market of interest is decoupling capacitance for all other purposes (medical, industrial, aeronautics, etc.), which should reach $30M in 2025 with a 6.9% CAGR 2019 – 2025.
A DIVERSE RANGE OF PLAYERS
A diverse range of players are active in IPDs. These include start-up companies (3DiS, XPeedIC, IPDia – as a branch of Murata – etc.) developing custom solutions for high-end markets, IDMs (Qorvo, Skyworks, Broadcom) that include IPD in their RF modules, OSATs (ASE, Amkor, etc.), and foundry service providers (TSMC, STMicroelectronics) requested to have this solution in their portfolio. Depending on the player(s), the interest differs as well as the long-term strategy. In general, IPD start-up companies are small technology companies with an innovative approach that addresses high-end markets, but which are seeking growth and have not managed to find it in their niche. Typically, these companies will either look to diversify their markets and explore consumer opportunities or license their technology to OSATs and foundry service providers.
OSATs and foundries view IPD as a mandatory part of their portfolio, without it being a direct revenue creator. Some specific client demands include IPD, and in some recent cases IPD have become a strategic piece of technology. This is the case for TSMC and Apple: TSMC managed to master IPD 3D integration for decoupling capacitors, which helped it secure the very lucrative Apple application processor market. Though IPD themselves do not create direct value, their impact can be huge. For IDMs and RF component manufacturers, IPD are considered more of a nice piece of technology for reducing size and increasing performance in some specific cases. IPD are not yet ubiquitous in these companies’ developments, but their presence is increasing.
A COMPLEX POSITIONING, BUT ONE WHICH SEES MARKET INTEREST
IPD suffer from LTCC competition, and LTCC themselves deal with low-cost SMD competition. Pragmatically speaking, in any complex system the passives are not the critical part. In fact, passive components have been around since the early days of electronics, and solutions that are small enough, cheap enough, and performant enough exist for almost any application. For large-volume applications in particular, cost is one of the most important criteria, and therefore the cheapest viable solution will always be chosen first. This means that, for highvolume systems, LTCC will be chosen over SMD only if no other option exists, and likewise IPD will be chosen over LTCC only if mandatory. This leaves IPD as a “last resort” solution when performance is critical enough. For low-volume, high-performance solutions, the issue with IPD positioning is different and the problem lies on the manufacturer’s side. Even if expensive, IPD stay in absolute low-cost components, and a minimum revenue is asked from IPD manufacturers before custom-creating an IPD solution. This infers that many applications cannot feature IPD, since they are not attractive enough for product development.
Active Semi, Airoha, Akoustis, Apple, ASE, Asus, AT&T, AwinIC, Broadcom, CanaanTek, Cavendish Kinetics, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, CoolPad, Cypress Semiconductor, DB-HiTek, EE, Elisa, Ericsson, Etisalat, GlobalFoundries, Global Wafer, Google, HH Grace, HiSilicon, HMD Global, HTC, Huawei, Huntersun, Infineon, Intel, IQE, Jio, JRC, KDDI, KT, Kyocera, Lansus, Lenovo, LG, LG U+, Maxscend, MediaTek, Meizu, Murata, NationZ, Nokia, NSI, NTT Docomo, NXP, ON Semiconductor, OnePlus, Onmicro, Oppo, Orange, pSemi, Qorvo, Qualcomm, RDA, Resonant, Richwave, RoFS, Samsung, Samsung Electro Mechanical, SAWNICS, Shin-Etsu, Shoulder, SK Telecom, Skyworks, Smarter Micro, SMIC, SoftBank, Soitec, Sony, Sprint, STMicroelectronics, Sumitomo, Sunrise, Swisscom, Taiyo Yuden, TCL, TDK EPCOS, Telefonica, Telia, Telstra, TIM, T-Mobile, Toshiba, Tower Semi, Tpsco, TSMC, UMC, Unisoc, USI, Vanchip, Verizon, Vivo, Vodafone, WillSemi, WIN Semiconductors, WIPAM, Wisol, Xfab, Xiaomi, Xpeedic, Yuzhen IC, ZTE and more.
Key features of the report
- Thin-film IPD market forecast 2015 - 2025, in Mu and $M
- Thin-film IPD market trends and future evolution
- Technology trends and main manufacturing techniques