NXP and Qualcomm are duking it out in world’s biggest car market after China blocked tie-up of chip giants
- The failed marriage partners are duking it out in the world’s largest car market in terms of both demand and supply
- NXP has been working with almost every major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in China on chip designs
The collapse of the US$44 billion bid by US chip giant Qualcomm for Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors after China failed to approve the deal has taken a new twist, as the two companies now find themselves fighting it out in the country’s red-hot automotive technology sector.
NXP’s EVP of Global Sales Stephen Owen said the automotive space is a big focus for the company and that it has been working with almost every major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in China, the world’s largest automotive market, as it steps up competition with Qualcomm in automotive chip designs.
Qualcomm, the largest maker of smartphone chips, unveiled three new chips for cars at CES on Monday, aimed at bringing digital dashboard technology to mass-market models – an area NXP is also focused on.
“Qualcomm’s technologies are in slightly different vehicle areas than ours. They tend to focus on high-end processing whereas we tend to look at system solutions [such as radar and battery management],” said Owen, in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2019 in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “So we address different things within vehicles, but we are still competitors.”
The failed marriage partners are duking it out in the world’s largest car market in terms of both demand and supply and as China pushes electric vehicles and tightens emission standards. The country is currently on track to enable half of its new cars to go “intelligent” – which means having smart features – by 2020, in an industry that churns out more than 20 million cars a year.
