Consumer chargers to represent signifcant percentage of GaN market in 2022
"¢ All recent GaN news announced power IC
"¢ Consumer electronics chargers are the main market, with a potential of $112M
"¢ Industrial and energy applications will generally adopt GaN later, due to their higher requirements
Last week Dialog Semiconductor announced their latest device: A GaN (Gallium Nitride) Power IC targeting consumer charger applications. This adds to the list of recently released GaN devices, which are all power ICs targeting that consumer market segment.
Point The Power identified this trend in its recently released market report Applications & Markets for GaN in Power Electronics (Point The Power, August 2016).
The first market for GaN in power electronics is consumer power supplies, with laptop and electronic device chargers in the first row.
"Consumer systems don't require the same lifetime and warranty as industrial systems." said Alex AVRON, Principal Market Analyst at Point The Power. "Industry or energy segments like PV inverters need a minimum expected lifetime of 10, sometimes 15 years, when the lifetime of a laptop charger is 5 years at most."
Alex added: "It's a perfect playground for innovation and new product releases. Many start-ups have taken advantage of this, such as California-based companies FinSix and Avogy or Canada-based Appulse Power."
Laptop and smartphone charger markets are perfect playgrounds to test and trial Wide Band Gap devices and new topologies:
"¢ Comparatively short lifetime required
"¢ Size reduction as a main driver
"¢ Lower price sensitivity
According to Point The Power, GaN is and will stay in direct competition with Super Junction MOSFET. They are already the most used devices for consumer power supplies of all kinds "“ with a total market of more than $800M this year.
Gallium Nitride will allow new applications to emerge for power converters, just as IGBTs and MOSFETs have done in the past; neither replaced Bipolar Junction transistors, but in fact, facilitated new applications.
"Each time a new device has arrived on the market, it did not eat its competing devices' market share, but rather enlarged the overall market size through new applications"
According to Point The Power's latest market report Applications & Markets for GaN in Power Electronics, GaN for consumer power supplies is only the beginning of a bigger trend to offer new smaller and more efficient charging and powering systems.
