TI Korea sows seeds for high growth in automotive market

(iTers News) - Texas Instruments Inc. is restructuring its operations across the world to refocus its chip design resources and expertise on analog and embedded processing applications like automotive and industrial markets.

Well known as a test bed market for global IT titans’ new innovative technologies, Korea will be a litmus test of how TI’s renewed focus on embedded solutions will pay off in the global automotive market.

(Kent Chon / President , Texas Instruments Korea Ltd.)

At a press briefing held on Nov. 29, Kent Chon, president with Texas Instruments Korea said, “As I promised, TI Korea has laid the groundwork for our reentry into Korean automotive market in 2012. Especially, we have redesigned our legacy OMAP processors with new interfaces and new peripherals to make them optimized for the car infotainment applications, where we see great potentials.”

What TI is zeroing in on are wireless charging system, car infotainment, automotive power and driver system, TPMS, and SOC solution for air bags and braking systems.

Those segments are where TI’s legacy analog as well as embedded processing solutions like DSP and microcontrollers are in high demand.

For example, TI is rebuilding its flagship OMAP product line-up around ARM CPU, Imagination GPU and its DSP cores to carve out critical masses in the car infotainment markets.

TI’s legacy micro-mirror-based DLP projection engines are also being recalibrated to power a head-mounted- display system which will project in-car dash-board navigation information on a front windshield window. The HMD system was already put to the test for the commercial rollout in the foreseeable future.

TI has other key building blocks like CMOS and IR, or infrared image sensors ready for advanced driver assistant system, or ADAS, which are rapidly emerging as one of killer apps for high-end luxury car market. In-car wireless connectivity solutions are TI's another sure-bet, too, as the chip maker has a wide range of radio frequency offerings from 802.11p Wi-Fi, to GPS to Bluetooth.

In 2011, automotive applications represented about 8% of TI’s revenues. Yet, the chipmaker is setting its sights higher to generate more revenue from the sector. TI Korea will play a pivotal role in achieving the goal.

The worldwide automotive chip market made up only 8% of global semiconductor chip market in 2010, according to Semicast Automotive Market, but that’s where high profitability and high growth lie ahead, growing two times as fast as other market segments.

(James Ahn / Manager Embedded Processor ,Business Development ,

Texas Instruments Korea Ltd.)

(Sonny Kang / Automotive Manager, Automotive Team,                                                                             Texas Instruments Korea Ltd.)

(Hea Kyung Yoo / Communication Manager, Sales Operation,

Texas Instruments Korea Ltd.)

Videos and Photos by JH Bae