As automobiles evolve towards electrification, intelligence, and connectivity, the demand for electronic components such as sensors, power semiconductors, and motors is increasing. In turn, these components require more power management chips for current and voltage conversion, which in turn drives the development of the analog power chip market.
According to data from IC Insights, the global power management chip market is expected to reach $52.6 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.8% from 2023 to 2025. However, this market is still dominated by foreign manufacturers, with a few overseas giants holding more than 80% of the global power management chip market share. This presents a significant substitution opportunity for domestic power management chip manufacturers.
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At the same time, driven by national policy support, the dividend of domestic substitution, and the capital boom, coupled with the impact of the chip shortage in previous years, domestic chip manufacturers have entered the power management chip track by taking the relatively low-barrier consumer electronics as an entry point, and have achieved a relatively diversified product layout in this field.
On the other hand, in the field of automotive power management chips with higher requirements for safety and reliability, domestic manufacturers are gradually making breakthroughs. The domestic analog chip company, Naxing Micro, has performed particularly well in this area. Its power management products such as gate drive, power supply, LED drive, motor drive, and power path protection have been successfully mass-produced and introduced to customers in the automotive field, becoming one of the few domestic power management manufacturers that have entered the automotive-grade market.
Local companies are all involved in the power chip market.
Let's first briefly understand the power management chip, which is a chip that takes on the responsibility of transforming, distributing, detecting, and other energy management of electrical energy in the electronic device system. The power management chip will directly affect the performance of electronic devices and is an indispensable type of chip in modern electronic products.
According to functional classification, power management chips can be divided into various types such as AC/DC converters, DC/DC converters, charging management chips, charging protection chips, wireless charging chips, and driver chips.
From small mobile phones to large space stations, you can find the figure of power management chips in all kinds of products. Almost all electrical and electronic systems use power management chips. In fact, power management chips account for more than half of the analog chip market, and the opportunities contained in it can be imagined.
It is also due to the wide range of application scenarios, and the continuous demand from the downstream, which is driving the development of power management chips. Although the semiconductor industry has been in a downturn in the past two years, the power management chip market, especially in China, has maintained a stable growth rate.
According to Gartner data, the market size of China's power chip market in 2022 is about $13 billion, and it is expected to reach $20 billion by 2025, with a compound growth rate of about 15.4%. In addition, according to the international market research institution TMR, the global power management chip market size will reach $56.5 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.7% from 2018 to 2026.In this rapidly developing chip market, domestic manufacturers are showing a very rapid development momentum. It is worth noting that the largest end market for power management chips is still consumer electronics, and most domestic manufacturers are also concentrated in this market. In addition to the consumer electronics field, although other fields such as automotive electronics, wearable devices, smart home appliances, industrial applications, base stations, and equipment are also developing rapidly, there are relatively fewer domestic manufacturers, especially in the fastest-growing automotive power management chip market, where few domestic manufacturers were willing to delve into this market before the severe shortage in 2021.
The reason is that the customer entry threshold is high, and the gap between domestic and foreign products and technologies is difficult to eliminate in the short term. The five major giants have already had a complete product layout, while most domestic enterprises are still on the road to improving product category coverage and expanding product markets, and have not yet entered the iterative upgrade stage. Whenever there are new demands or new problems in the downstream market, enterprises need to carry out a new round of research and development according to the demands and problems.
As one of the few power management manufacturers that have entered the automotive market, Naxin Micro has maintained a high proportion of R&D investment in recent years. It is understood that Naxin Micro's R&D investment in 2023 was 521.6144 million yuan, a 29.17% increase from 2022, accounting for 39.79% of the business income. The strong R&D support has paved the way for Naxin Micro to enter this market.
Compared with other domestic power management manufacturers, Naxin Micro's R&D investment has obvious targeting. Naxin Micro stated that unlike other manufacturers scattered in the consumer and industrial fields, Naxin Micro has invested nearly 90% of its resources in the automotive field. This focused approach has given Naxin Micro a greater advantage in the competition in high-threshold fields, especially in the automotive regulation gate drive market, where Naxin Micro's domestic market share has reached about 10%-15%, far ahead of other domestic power manufacturers.
The power management chip market is fiercely competitive. For domestic analog chip manufacturers, this track has reached the point where it has to be rolled up. How to break the situation in the future, step out of the shadow of the giants, and truly achieve domestic replacement has become a topic that every manufacturer needs to consider carefully. Manufacturers like Naxin Micro, who have stepped out of their comfort zone and successfully entered the automotive market, have stood out in the past two years, providing a different answer for domestic analog chips.
Automotive power chip, a new route
Some people may wonder, facing the pressure of foreign giants, what breakthroughs has Naxin Micro achieved in automotive power management chips?
Let's first understand the current situation of automotive power management chips. In automobiles, power management chips are mainly responsible for the power supply of automotive electronic devices, including power for starting, headlights, dashboards, etc. They can effectively manage and distribute power to ensure the normal operation of automotive electronic devices. In addition, motor control chips also play a crucial role, which can control the speed and direction of the motor to ensure stable driving of the car.
In addition, the gate drive mentioned in the previous text also plays an important role in automobiles. Since the gate drive is usually included in the power and motor control system, it can also be classified as a broad sense of power management chips. As the three-electric system of new energy vehicles is increasingly valued, this chip has also become a hot track.
As a buffer circuit between the low-voltage controller and the high-power circuit, the gate drive can achieve more effective conduction and off of power devices. Traditional gate drivers usually require a larger system area and additional components to achieve EMC compliance and meet safety requirements. The isolated gate driver with new technology and process has a small package size, integrating the isolated power supply and related passive components, reducing the complexity of system design and the demand for additional design resources, which is one of the current development trends.Thanks to the development of electrification, networking, and intelligence, the application of power supply chips in vehicles is increasing. It is understood that an ordinary new energy vehicle uses more than 100 power supply chips. Third-party data shows that the global automotive power management chip market size was about 1.92 billion US dollars in 2023, and it is expected to reach 2.14 billion US dollars in 2025. In terms of gate driving, the gate driver market value was 1.73 billion US dollars in 2021, and it is expected to reach 2.7 billion US dollars in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.9%. The application with the highest growth rate during this period is electric vehicles, accounting for 32%.
It can be said that the automotive industry has become the most promising application field for the power management chip market.
Looking back at the domestic market, due to the continuous improvement of domestic new energy vehicles in endurance and charging, mainstream Chinese car companies have started to layout high-voltage platforms, developing from 400V platforms to 800V platforms, which will inevitably create more demand for automotive-grade power supply and driving chips, and is expected to achieve a higher growth rate than the global market.
However, due to high technical barriers and high requirements for automotive-grade certification, the difficulty and long cycle, there are not many domestic companies that can supply automotive-grade power supply and driving chips, and the mass production capacity is limited. Even after the "chip shortage" in the automotive industry from 2021 to 2022, the participation of domestic manufacturers is still very limited.
Nacxin Micro, established in 2013, has broken the foreign monopoly in automotive-grade power supply and driving chips after continuous research and development investment. The products launched not only passed the AEC-Q100 automotive chip certification but also strictly followed the automotive process and control system from product definition development to wafer packaging delivery.
It is understood that the automotive-grade chips of Naixin Micro have been mass-produced in a large number of mainstream car manufacturers/first-tier automotive suppliers. In the past two years, they have also achieved great breakthroughs in automotive-related businesses: the shipment of automotive electronics in 2023 has reached 164 million, accounting for 30.95% of the automotive electronics revenue, an increase of about 7.82 percentage points from the previous year. In the first quarter of 2024, the proportion of automotive electronics has further increased to 35.63%.
The layout of Naixin Micro's power management chips
Before, most people knew about Naixin Micro mainly based on its strong strength in signal chains and sensors. In the "three-wheel drive" product layout emphasized by Naixin Micro in recent years, power management chips have become a key link, and Naixin Micro has achieved automotive-grade breakthroughs in areas that were difficult to reach with domestic substitution.
In the current layout of Naixin Micro's power management products, we can see five major categories: gate drivers, motor drivers, LED drivers, power supplies, and power path protection. Different from most domestic power management chip companies focusing on the consumer electronics field, automotive electronics, as the business focus of Naixin Micro, has been put in the first place.So, how is NAXIN's power management products developing in the automotive field?
According to NAXIN's introduction, NAXIN is focusing on the automotive field. In terms of gate drive, the company took the lead in launching automotive-grade products in 2021, and by 2023, it has completed the upgrade and replacement of industrial and automotive isolation drive products, and has firmly occupied a leading position in the domestic market. At the same time, it has made breakthrough progress in the field of automotive main drive functional safety gate drive, and has become the first enterprise in China to launch such products. It is worth noting that NAXIN's latest single-channel high-speed gate drive chip is specially designed for driving GaN HEMT (High Electron Mobility Transistor) in the laser radar emitter, which can cope with various challenges in the application of laser radar.
In the direction of motor drive, the multi-channel pre-drive motor drive and stepper motor drive new products launched by NAXIN have also obtained the positioning of multiple domain control and body control Tier-1. It is understood that the high-integration NSUC1610 small motor drive SoC launched by NAXIN integrates the ARM core MCU, 4-channel half-bridge driver, and LIN interface on a single chip, achieving efficient and real-time control of small motor applications, and is widely used in the electronic expansion valve, AGS, and electronic air outlet of the new energy vehicle thermal management system.
In the three major categories of LED drive, power supply, and power path protection, NAXIN has also made significant breakthroughs:
In the direction of LED drive, NAXIN has completed the mass production of automotive-grade LED drive products for through tail lights, and has successfully introduced customers in the tail light market. The relevant product series covers single-channel, three-channel, and 16 and 24-channel LED drive products used in through light scenes, and their excellent performance and stability have been unanimously recognized by the market.
In the direction of power supply, NAXIN launched a low-power LDO, which is designed specifically for automotive battery power supply applications, with the advantages of small size, high precision, low noise, and low static power consumption, which is very suitable for automotive applications with high requirements for standby power consumption, to supply power to MCU and CAN/LIN transceivers in the standby system, achieving the purpose of saving power and extending battery life.
In the direction of power path protection, NAXIN's automotive-grade intelligent high and low-side switches cover different Ron and channel count combinations, suitable for driving resistive, capacitive, and inductive loads, and support complete diagnostic protection functions. It is understood that NAXIN's intelligent low-side switch has passed the AEC-Q100 automotive qualification, and the first high-side switch product has been introduced to the top automotive customers, and is expected to achieve mass production this year.
We can see that as a domestic analog chip company, NAXIN has not only achieved domestic replacement in signal chain and sensor products around the automotive field, but also made power management chips a new breakthrough point.
In conclusion, before 2022, most domestic analog chip companies mainly followed the "PIN TO PIN" form to replace the domestic automotive chip, and what foreign manufacturers did, domestic enterprises would follow suit. This step-by-step approach indeed played a good role during the chip shortage, and domestic enterprises occupied a part of the market, and domestic car companies also solved the urgent need.However, when the supply of automotive chips returns to a stable situation, this approach becomes difficult to gain an advantage, especially when facing the fierce competition of foreign manufacturers who are lowering their prices. It seems that domestic manufacturers are somewhat at a loss.
Nexperia has not taken this path. It emphasizes innovation around applications, launching corresponding products by understanding customer needs, and through in-depth collaboration with customers, closely following the development trend of downstream application scenarios to develop more innovative products. Customers are also happy to see such a set of solutions that are more in line with their needs. This is undoubtedly a new way of thinking for domestic analog chip manufacturers.
We believe that domestic chip manufacturers like Nexperia, with a clear layout and vision, will become one of the main forces in the wave of domestic power management chip development in the future.
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