Date: 29/11/2010

Report: Trident beats MStar Semiconductor in the TV chip market in 2010

iSuppli Corp has reported that U.S.-based semiconductor supplier Trident Microsystems Inc. has capitalized on new technology and customers gained from its acquisition of certain assets from NXP Semiconductors in late 2009 to take the leadership position in the fast-growing market for television video processing chips in 2010, surpassing MStar Semiconductor Inc. of Taiwan in the first quarter. Trident has steadily built up its lead throughout 2010. At the end of the third quarter, Trident accounted for 13.8 percent of global television processing semiconductor revenue, adds iSuppli.

"Trident's strong 2010 performance represents a complete turnaround from its weak results in 2008 and 2009," said Randy Lawson, principal analyst and manager, for iSuppli. "Leveraging the acquisition of Dutch-based NXP's television semiconductor business in late 2009, Trident has been able to gain leadership in the market for LCD-TV controller chips that support 120Hz-and-faster frame rates. NXP products and intellectual property also have allowed Trident to better address the market for smaller, lower-end LCD-TVs. Finally, NXP provided Trident with an invaluable customer base in South Korea, greatly expanding its sales."

"Growth in the television processing semiconductor business is being generated by a number of market and technology trends specific to the TV segment, where dramatic product changes have-and will continue to be-introduced to the consumer marketplace," Lawson said. "These trends are increasing the complexity and cost of video processing chips."

Other highlights from iSuppli:
During the first three quarters of 2010, the television video processor market amounted to $1.78 billion, up more than 30 percent from the same period in 2009. The most significant trend remains the continuing transition away from Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT) technology and toward flat-panel alternatives, mainly LCDs. The percentage of flat-panel TVs shipped supporting Full HD will rise to 75 percent by 2012, up from only 34 percent in 2009, iSuppli predicts. This again requires additional functionality in television processing chips. A final trend enhancing the value of video processing chips is the addition of compelling new features to televisions, including Internet connectivity, user apps and 3D display.

LCDs require more electronics not only to drive the panel, but also to address their shortcomings compared to CRTs or plasma displays. One of these shortcomings is that LCDs have a slower pixel response time, which can cause motion in the video to appear to be blurred in the displayed image. Such an issue creates the need for complex motion adaptive video processing and panel drive schemes to be adopted by an ever-widening scope of LCD-TV models. LCDs larger than 50-inches in size also require improvements in their contrast ratios in order to better compete with plasma screens. This spurs the need for dynamic backlight controls and video processing algorithms that must be added to processing chips.

Zoran Corp. of the United States is maintaining its dominance of the North American television video processor market in 2010. iSuppli estimates that, on a units basis, Zoran captured nearly 29 percent of the flat-panel TV processor chip market for the North American market, outpacing Taiwan's MediaTek Inc., in second place with 14 percent share. Within the domestic Chinese market, MStar is even more dominant, achieving an estimated 70 percent share of flat-panel television video processor unit shipments during 2010.