Date: 20/01/2012

NFC semiconductor chip market driven by smart-mobile

Near Field Communication (NFC) integrated mobile phones are becoming natural choice over plastic ID cards for trasactional and access applications. Google is pushing hard to make NFC a success in Android OS based mobile devices. e-wallet is the name of the application requiring NFC for communication. NFC is also finding more applications than what it presently used for. All of this is enabling big growth for NFC device shippment. NFC devices are generally composed by a Secure Element, a RF transceiver which can be interfaced to host processor. Secure Element can be either a secure chip or a SIM card The big events such as Olympic Games 2012 are expected to drive NFC in big way.

IMS Research has estimated the number of NFC-enabled mobile phones shipped in 2011 was 35 million globally and this figure is set to grow to 80 million by the end of 2012. IMS predicts by 2016, mobile payment is expected to become the most popular NFC application by far and 44% of all mobile phones sold in 2016 will be NFC-enabled.

As per IMS, the number of Secure Elements shipped in 2011 for NFC-enabled mobile phones at 45.8 million. Embedded Secure Elements accounted for the lion's share at 26.6 million units, while SIM cards and other solutions such as microSD cards accounted for 19 million units and 0.2 million units, respectively, according to IMS. IMS also expects an average growth of 94 percent per annum for the NFC security microcontroller market from 2011 through to 2016. The share of Embedded Secure Elements, as the main security solution for NFC applications, is to extend to 49% by the year 2016, followed by the SIM card at 33%, predicts IMS.

The top semiconductor vendors of NFC chips are ranked by IMS research in the order of Infineon, NXP, Samsung and ST Microelectronics.

Infineon Technologies holds a 51.5 percent share in the NFC security microcontroller market. In some of its NFC security microcontroller chips, Infineon uses its "Integrity Guard" security technology, so that the data is stored in encrypted form and remains encrypted for processing along the entire data path - CPUs, memories, caches and buses.

NXP Semiconductors with a close partnership with Google is ranked two with a share of 31.8%. NXP has tuned its chips to support Google's wallet.

Being a both phone and semiconductor IC company Samsung is started its big move into NFC area in late 2010. Samsung share in this market is 8.6%.

Though ST Microelectronics is reported to supplying its NFC chips to major phone maker, but its share is estimated at 5.6%. ST said it has worked with Microsoft to enable ST's NFC solution support for the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. ST is also partnering with CTIA Wireless, and Gemalto to develop NFC based solutions.

The other vendors in this market includes Broadcom, Austriamicrosystems, Melexis, Texas Instruments, and Renesas(this order not by ranking).