After falling 7% in 2019 due to the weak global economy and then declining 2% in 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis, MCU sales rebounded with a 27% increase in 2021, reaching a record $20.2 billion. The 2021 increase was the largest percentage growth for MCUs since 2000. The average selling price (ASP) of MCUs rose 12% in 2021, the largest annual increase since the mid-1990s. Orders for MCUs, which are in limited supply, grew by only 13% in 2021, reaching 31.2 billion units.
Despite the strong recovery of microcontrollers (MCUs) last year, the sales rankings of the top five microcontroller vendors remained unchanged from 2020, according to IC Insights' new Q2 update to its McClean Report 2022 service (Figure 1). The Q2 update shows that three of the top five MCU vendors in 2021 are based in Europe (NXP, STMicroelectronics, and Infineon), one in the United States (Microchip), and one in Japan (Renesas).
The five largest microcontroller vendors develop and sell ARM-based MCUs. These companies accounted for 82.1% of global MCU sales in 2021, up from 72.2% in 2016, indicating continued growth in the microcontroller market. The increase in the size of the largest MCU vendors has resulted from significant acquisitions and mergers since 2016. The five largest MCU vendors are significantly larger than the rest of the top 10 microcontroller vendors combined, according to the update report. For example, the second half of the top 10 (Texas Instruments, Nuvoton, Rohm, Samsung, and Toshiba) accounted for $2.3 billion in MCU sales last year, or 11.4% of the total market. Outside the top 10, MCU vendors held only a 6.5% market share in 2021.
In 2021, the Dutch company NXP, which holds the top spot, slightly widened its lead in MCU revenue over second-place Microchip by $103 million. Microchip increased its sales lead over third-place Renesas by about $40 million last year, according to new estimates in IC Insights' Q2 update report.
Fourth-ranked STMicroelectronics saw the largest sales increase in the MCU rankings, with revenues rising 35% in 2021. This nearly allowed the company to overtake Renesas, closing to within just $46 million of its Japanese rival. Renesas had been the largest MCU supplier for the first half of the last decade but was overtaken in 2016 after NXP acquired the US-based Freescale in late 2015. Renesas' market share of MCU sales fell to 17.0% in 2021, down from 33.1% in 2011.
German company Infineon maintained its fifth-place ranking in the 2021 microcontroller market, with sales increasing by 22% to $2.4 billion, approximately $996 million less than ST's MCU sales last year. Infineon rose to fifth place in the MCU rankings after acquiring US-based Cypress Semiconductor in April 2020 for $9.3 billion to further expand its presence in automotive microcontrollers, power management, and other embedded systems applications.
