The 2021 MCU rankings are released, and the top five manufacturers continue to expand their market share

MCUs, which are used for embedded control and computing functions, are becoming more popular with the increasing automation of embedded systems and sensors. At the same time, the shortage trend makes the popularity of MCUs in 2021 a key factor in the suppliers' inability to keep up with the strong rebound in 2021 from the global economic recession in 2020 caused by the Covid-19 virus pandemic.

MCU sales fell 7% in 2019 due to the weak global economy, and then continued to fall 2% in 2020, but MCU sales rebounded in 2021, increasing 27% to a record high of US$20.2 billion. The highest growth rate since 2000. The average selling price (ASP) of MCUs climbed 12% in 2021, while MCU shipments only increased by 13% to 31.2 billion units in 2021 due to the impact of the industry chain.

According to the latest report from IC Insights, during last year's strong MCU recovery, the sales rankings of the five largest microcontroller suppliers remained unchanged compared to 2020. They are NXP, Microchip, Renesas Electronics, STMicroelectronics and Infineon.

The five largest microcontroller suppliers all develop and sell ARM-based MCUs. These companies accounted for 82.1% of global MCU sales in 2021, compared to 72.2% in 2016, which means that the giants in the microcontroller field continue to expand. The market share growth of the largest MCU suppliers since 2016 is mainly due to major acquisitions and mergers. According to the updated report, the five largest MCU suppliers are significantly larger than the other suppliers in the top 10 of microcontrollers. For example, the second half of the top 10 (Texas Instruments, Nuvoton, Rohm, Samsung and Toshiba) had $2.3 billion in MCU sales last year, accounting for 11.4% of the total market. Outside the top 10, MCU suppliers had a market share of only 6.5% in 2021.

ST had the strongest sales growth in the MCU rankings, with revenues increasing 35% in 2021, which nearly pushed the company past Renesas Electronics. Renesas had been the largest MCU supplier for the first five years of the past decade, but fell in 2016 after NXP acquired Freescale in late 2015. Renesas' market share of MCU sales was 17.0% in 2021, compared with 33.1% in 2011.

Germany's Infineon Technologies AG maintained its fifth position in the 2021 microcontroller rankings, with sales up 22% to $2.4 billion, about $996 million less than ST's MCU sales last year. Infineon moved into the top five MCU rankings after acquiring U.S.-based Cypress for $9.3 billion in April 2020 to further expand into automotive microcontrollers, power management and other embedded system applications.