This session included three presentations: Electrification—A Chance for Automotive Electronics, by Valentine von Tils, vice president of platform development ASICs, Robert Bosch Corp.; Unified Communications: The Real Business Behind Web2.0, by Thomas Wiemers, vice president of strategic marketing, Siemens Communications; and Mobile Innovation: Improving Customer’s Quality Of Life, by Luigi Licciardi, executive VP, technology & operations, Telecom Italia.
Valentine von Tils’ lecture pointed out that the automotive sector has been a driving force in the semiconductor market with an average annual growth rate from 1996 to 2006 of 10.1% worldwide versus 6.5% for the overall semiconductor market for the same period. He showed a slide that projects the automotive semiconductor market to grow from $18.3B in 2005 to $60B in 2020 (fig. 1).
Electrification as defined by von Tils is the substitution of mechanical and hydraulic systems by electrical systems. He pointed out that the essential driver for electrification of automobiles and other vehicles is the environment, specifically the need to reduce CO2 emissions. The table in Figure 2 shows how CO2 emissions can be reduced by electrification of a vehicle, with the electric power steering (EPS) and water pump having the highest CO2 reduction values. A more complete look at the electronic management systems needed in a hybrid electric vehicle is shown in Figure 3. And, of course, semiconductors are needed in all of these areas.
Even though von Tils foresees some challenges in the automotive market, like enhanced requirements for semis in automotive versus consumer apps (fig. 4) for example, he believes that automotive electronics is an attractive market for the following reasons: stable and growing business; small changes in year to year prices; possibility of long-term planning; and healthy long-term growth. He finished his talk by showing a graph of the absolute value of semiconductors per average car, which is expected to increase from about $230 in 2008 to over $700 in 2020 (fig. 5).
The second talk in this session, Unified Communications – The Real Business Behind Web 2.0, pointed out that social networks and the Web 2.0 paradigm has dramatically changed the way we act as consumers and as enterprises. Wiemers noted that one of the big growth drivers he sees for unified communications is video, which is projected to be a $50B market by 2013 (fig. 6). Other growth drivers are security, bandwidth, collaboration and the connected life, and green IT. He shows the latter having a 66% growth rate through 2010 (fig. 7), with hardware, software, and services making up the remainder. Finally, Wiemers showed a unified communications (UC) phone, OpenStage, marketed by Siemens, which has a number of firsts including user interface, ability to connect to wireless infrastructure and others (fig. 8).
Licciardi’s discussion on mobile innovation was the last leg of this session. He proposed a new human centric paradigm where the customer and his needs are the focus of innovation—focusing his attention on several areas that could be implemented via mobile broadband: time management, environmental sustainability, health and safety, M-payments, need to socialize, and fashion and personal style. He also listed a variety of new business opportunities in all of these areas (fig. 9 and fig. 10). He talked about bridging the digital divide through mobile broadband services and pointed out that the mobile access evolution must be supported by a strong and efficient transport capacity (backhauling). He then talked about the fusion of devices and services (fig. 11) and expounded on applications such as the personal newsstand, which melds e-paper based readers with wireless broadband delivery of news. Licciardi concluded his talk by noting the key role microelectronics plays in enabling the customer’s quality of life. Microelectronics enables the evolution of: telecommunications technology with regards to broadband access; new handset functionalities and business opportunities, displays; and high-capacity memory and high-performance multimedia processors (fig. 12).