Survey ranks EEPROM contenders

The iSuppli analysis reports that STMicroelectronics had a 2006 EEPROM market share of 25%, substantially ahead of its nearest competitor.

STMicroelectronics has retained leadership of the Serial EEPROM market in 2006 - the third successive year - according to market intelligence organisation iSuppli.

The iSuppli analysis reports ST had a 2006 market share of 25%, substantially ahead of its nearest competitor, and an increase in sales value of 17.8% despite falling prices.

Products contributing to the US $278 million sales total include Serial EEPROM devices, memory cards and RFID tags.

ST reached a production volume of 1.7 billion serial EEPROM devices - an increase of more than 22% over 2005.

Commenting on the iSuppli results, Benoit Rodrigues, General Manager of ST's EEPROM Division, said: "We are still the solid leader in EEPROM, with around 25% of the world market, and 2006 sales that were US $50 million more than our nearest competitor".

Rodrigues attributes ST's success in the market to its policy of continuous improvement in EEPROM technology and manufacturing efficiency and in package innovation, coupled with a long-term commitment to the market that has generated customer confidence.

ST now offers the world's fastest and highest-density ranges of standard EEPROMs, available in the smallest and most cost-efficient packages.

It produces three bus types, and densities up to 1Mbit now being introduced in the I2C and SPI interface families.

The company uses a sub-micron process technology that delivers top-class performance and serves as a reference standard in the industry.

ST's Serial EEPROM devices are used across all market segments, especially in automotive applications, where they are specified to operate in the -40 to 125C temperature range and comply with the High Reliability Certified Flow (HRCF) standard.

The devices are also used in communications, consumer electronics, industrial and personal computer applications.

Gaming, LCD modules, digital TVs and wireless LANs were particularly strong areas in 2006.

The memory portfolio spans a full range from general-purpose memory chips to application-specific EEPROMs, developed in co-operation with major OEMs driving the development of new markets.

ST has strategic alliances with key players in the major market segments.

ST's application-specific memories (ASMs) are built on a common nonvolatile technology platform, allowing different memory types - OTP, ROM and EEPROM - to be combined on a single chip and to use a range of interfaces.

EEPROMs (electrically erasable programmable memories) are nonvolatile memories that can be electrically rewritten.

They offer fine granularity and high flexibility, with byte or page-level updates taking less than 10msec.

Their write/erase endurance is at least one million cycles, more than enough for most applications, making them suited to the storage of parameter information that needs to be updated regularly.

Serial EEPROMs use a fast serial interface instead of the traditional parallel interface, and now dominate the EEPROM market.

They use the same tiny eight-pin packages for all memory densities, simplifying design for manufacturers and enabling easy memory upgrades.

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