Re: 8 bit microcontroller market

Ian Bell wrote:
Robert_Teufel wrote:
I work for a company that manufactures 8051 derivatives and we follow
the market all the time and I try to keep this as unbiased as possible.
The leader in units is Microchip, accounting for all the PIC1x devices.


I have heard this anecdote several times (on the web) but it is always
unqualified. Does it mean Microchip shipped more 8 bitters than any other
single 8 bit manufacturer?

Yes - and it also bundles ALL those different PIC cores into one basket.

if it does it tells only part of the story - or
does it mean more PICs were shipped than any other type of 8 bit micro - a
totaly different statistic. I suspect there are still more 8051 derivatives
shipped than PICs for example but I need some way to get these figures.

80C51's are over 1 billion / year, and microchip is approaching that, but only if they fudge things by pretending all their PIC cores are the same :)

PICs would own the low-pin-count, Low IQ, business, and the low ASP of PICs shows how many rice-grains they ship. - and also shows how slow takeup has been on PIC18 and d***.

However, the 80C51 is now moving into the low-pin-count territory, as is the AVR, and Zilog et al, so their base-segment is getting more crowded.
eg at 20 pins, you now have 16K Flash 80C51 variants.

Microchip's analog business is growing faster than their uC's.


The leader in Dollar volume is probably still Freescale (latest data I
have is 2004), including ancient devices such as the HC05, all 08
devices, HC11 and may be some more.


They have been for some time; plenty of anecdotal evidence of that.

Freescale wins, partly because many japanese vendors put thiers into the
16 bit basket. They also rake up all their 8 bit cores, to do this.



The 8051 claims to to have the widest coverage of applications or in
other words, most designs of all 8-bits.


Does it? Where is this written?

That would really be a no-contest, especially if you properly compared core-by-core, and not by brand name.


The AVR does not make it into this most... list, yet but it is
definitely a another "force" in the 8-bit.


Interesting because I found a news item from just a few years ago that
claimed the AVR had 30% of the 8 bit market.

That was carefull spin - it was not 30% of the 8 bit, but 30% of the flash 8 bit, at _that_ time, and by volume. Helped by a few things :
Hitachi puts most of their mature flash into 16 bit stats; Atmel ship large volumes of sub 50c AVRs; and PICs were slower to move to Flash, and did so on the more complex devices first.
You can reality check this for 2005/2006 by comparing Atmel/Microchips annual reports : total shipped (all) AVRs [all cores, mask & ram & smart cards] passed 500M a little while ago, whilst (all) PIC's are into their 3rd billion IIRC.
I think PIC has also recently passed 50% revenue from flash threshold.

Cumulative 80C51's are probably comfortably past 10 billion here in 2006.


Going with any of these architectures should be fairly save for years
to come.


Now at least two people have misunderstood my question. Perhaps I did not
explain myself well enough. I am not trying to make a design decision. it's
just you hear all sorts of anecdotes about the relative sizes of 8,16 and
32 bit markets, who has what share of which by volume, by value and so on
but I am trying to get a consolidated picture of this. Market research
companies create reports providing this info but the cost thousands of
dollars.

and they are largely useless :)

-jg

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