European chipless, fabless design houses still prosper

UK: The number of independent chipless, fabless and IC design houses in Europe continues to rise, despite a number of acquisitions in this sector, according to Future Horizons’ European Fabless Semiconductor Report.

The number of these startups in 2006 increased by almost 4 percent over the previous year, although it was a smaller increase than in 2005. The UK has three times as many companies as other European regions, with the exception of Israel.

In terms of the geographical location of fabless and IC design house companies in Europe during 2006, the UK leads with 31.9 percent, followed by Isreal with 15.5 percent, Rest of Europe (RoE) with 11.5 percent, France with 9.6 percent, Germany with 9.3 percent, Benelux with 8 percent, Switzerland with 7.7 percent, and Scandinavia with 6.5 percent.

"The UK position is no surprise and Israel has always been a source of new company generation, but Germany and France, despite their size, lag behind the leading two by some margin. The smaller, Greece and Switzerland, have seen the largest percentage new design company growth in recent times," said Chris Ryan, semiconductor industry analyst, Future Horizons.

The report covers independent IC design companies in Western Europe and Israel. This reference work shows analysis in terms of company IC design skills and IP sorted into categories, including analog, RF, CPU, automotive, encryption, sensor interface radio baseband and verification, etc., thus assisting likely customers to home in on the skills of a likely partner, customer or competitor.