There are many secular growth drivers for electronics, including diagnostic equipment for better healthcare; advancing energy efficiency in consumption and distribution; providing tools for greater mobility of people; enhanced financial, intellectual property (IP), and personal security; increasing electronic content in cars for safety, comfort, and entertainment; and high-bandwidth communications driven by high-definition video distribution. The analog solutions targeting all of these markets have one common need—effective power components.
The trend in healthcare for a broad range of cost-effective office-based diagnostic equipment as well as at-home instrumentation and battery-powered systems is a natural fit for low-power circuits, power-management technology, and highly integrated analog front ends. In the automotive markets, there is a need for ICs for hybrid and all electric vehicles— battery charging and battery management, as well as chips to address communications and entertainment applications.
For mobile battery-powered systems, the continuous addition of new features is the name of the game, especially in the rapidly expanding smart-phone market as well as e-book readers and tablets, which also are experiencing strong growth. These markets demand highly integrated mixed-signal products that combine power management, multimedia, haptics support, camera lens drivers, display backlighting, and battery management,and charging.
In the area of energy efficiency, new products must meet the needs of the Smart Grid as well as the electricity metering markets. This includes power-line modems for grid communications, simultaneous sampling analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and energy-monitoring microcontrollers.
To meet the demands of these multiple growth areas, Maxim has continued to invest significantly in research and development. More than 25% of our revenue goes toward research and development efforts to develop key technologies that let us introduce high-performance products at an average rate of one new product introduction every day of the year.
We see the analog market remaining strong, with continued growth opportunities over many years. Maxim will drive some of that growth, in part by heavily investing in research and development, but also by acquiring key technologies through acquisition or licensing and by partnering with industry leaders.