Smart card microcontrollers lead the way

Renesas Technology Corp has won the Frost and Sullivan 2005 Competitive Strategy Leadership Award for its outstanding performance in the smart card microcontroller market in 2004.

Renesas Technology Corp has won the Frost and Sullivan 2005 Competitive Strategy Leadership Award for its outstanding performance in the smart card microcontroller market in 2004.

Innovative products and technologies backed by precedent-setting competitive strategies have enabled the company to make significant market share gains.

Established as a joint venture between Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric in 2003, Renesas rapidly achieved market success.

An improved product split in its SIM shipments accompanied impressive revenue generation and further penetration into new applications in 2004.

Although unit shipments for the SIM market were similar in 2003 and 2004, around 85.0% of all Renesas' SIM shipments in 2003 were 32Kbyte or smaller, whereas in 2004, 80.0% were 64Kbyte.

The strategic focus on higher-end SIM cards has supported a healthy increase in the average selling price (ASP) over 2003 to 2004 and has resulted in stronger revenues compared with other market participants.

Renesas' two mainstream 64Kbyte devices - AE46C1 for mid to high-end Java platforms and AE4602 without coprocessor optimised for mid-end solutions - have been successfully incorporated by four of the top five smart card manufacturers in Europe, a leading card maker in Japan and a major Chinese manufacturer.

"Both products are suitable for high-end applications requiring rich functionality and high memory capacity, and therefore can be high-end SIM (3G) or multi-application cards", notes Frost and Sullivan Smart Card Analyst Prianka Chopra.

"They also support open operating systems such as Java, and Multos".

Driven primarily by the Japanese market, Renesas' Asia Pacific business has increased considerably with volume growth estimated at nearly 115.0% over 2004.

As the Japanese mobile industry (including KDDI and NTT DoCoMo) moves to USIM and 3G adoption, they are likely to start with 64Kbyte and migrate to 128Kbyte this year.

Renesas's ASP is benefiting due to its being a major supplier of 64Kbyte to a key Japanese smart card manufacturer.

Moreover, its supply of mid-end dual way devices for financial and national ID projects in Japan, while not large in volume, has had a positive impact on Renesas' revenues.

Receiving immediate return on its market strategy of focusing on high-end markets, Renesas captured the second place in terms of revenue market share in 2004 in the global smart card microcontroller IC market.

Apart from this, Renesas has made great strides in the banking sector.

Three years ago, the company was not considered a serious participant in this market but with nearly a 90% increase in volume from 2003 to 2004, Renesas has established itself as a serious contender in the market.

Renesas continues to invest in its successful smart card microcontroller business with the introduction of its unique F-SMONOS nonvolatile memory technology, well suited for chip size optimisation, and also with the expansion of its AE5 (32bit CPU) and contactless product portfolios.

With such investment, Renesas should continue to offer highly optimised devices to the mobile security market.

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