Microcontroller market to grow by 15% driven by IoT, solar, smart-home, and electric vehicle

The microcontroller (MCU) is a ubiquitous semiconductor IC, present not only in electronics systems but also in nearly every machine/device/system/equipment used for applications as wide as agriculture to toothbrushes to space stations. EMITT Solutions estimates a total worldwide revenue of around 17 Billion US$ generated by microcontrollers in 2013. Due to the growth of IoT, connected home appliances in smart-home, solar power systems, smart energy systems and electric-vehicles, EMITT Solutions forecasts a global microcontroller revenue growth of 15% in 2014 and 20% in 2015 and a shipment growth of 20% in 2014 and 30% in 2015. The 32-bit processor IP core Cortex-M series from ARM is the star performer in MCU market. If we group all ARM Cortex M microcontroller chipmakers as one group, that group's revenue is the most fast growing and takes the top slot in the microcontroller market. The ARM Cortex M0 is cutting hugely into 8-bit microcontroller market as a best low-cost option in various applications. However at the higher-end, where processing requirement is high performance, the proprietary processor-IP based 32-bit microcontrollers are still not giving much space to the ARM Cortex M4 based microcontroller chips. This is more so in applications such as automotive and industrial process control systems. Though 8-bit microcontrollers are still very active, their share i...