By Li Panpan

(JW Insights) Sep 28 -- Chinese automotive cockpit SoC mKers are entering a window phase to catch up with international players, said Zhao Yi, deputy general manager of JW Insights’ Consulting Division at the 2023 Automotive Semiconductor Ecosystem Summit and Global Automotive Electronics Expo held in Shenzhen from September 26-27.

His speech at the event covered the development trends of smart cockpit and smart cockpit SoC and the global and Chinese smart cockpit SoC market.

Car sales in China and worldwide have declined since 2017, indicating the automobile market with more intense competition.

As the car-buying population gradually shifts from those born in the 1980s to those born in the 90s and even the 2000s, the demand for intelligent cars is increasing. The smart cockpit is naturally one of the keys to the intelligent transformation of automobiles, said Zhao.

With the development of smart cockpits, human-vehicle interaction will no longer be limited to buttons or touches. The diversification of control methods requires smart cockpits to use multi-modal means to sense user operations. In the next few years, the penetration rate of in-car multi-microphone arrays and in-car cameras will increase significantly, and the average number of devices installed will go up simultaneously.

As the core of the smart cockpit, the computing power of SoC that supports smart cockpit interaction has also increased with the intelligence trend and differentiated needs of leading players. JW Insights predicts that, from 2024 to 2025, the computing power of smart cockpit SoC will usher in a significant leap.

Cockpit chips gradually evolve from distributed multi-single-function MCUs to single-core SoCs with high computing power and integration. Due to the safety requirements of smart cars, high-performance, and high-reliability MCUs are still needed in addition to SoCs. Therefore, although the demand for automotive MCUs will gradually decrease, it will still take a long time to be completely replaced by SoCs, added Zhao.

JW Insights’ forecast shows that the global cockpit SoC market will reach $5.12 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.2%, of which the Chinese market will reach $2.37 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.5%.

Zhao believes the current is a vital window phase for Chinese makers to catch up with leading overseas manufacturers. The current global demand for smart cockpits is proliferating. There will not be a dramatic increase in demand for the computing power of cockpit SoCs in the next three to five years. So, Chinese makers have time and can take advantage of distribution flexibility, localized services, and information security. JW Insights predicts that Chinese makers’ share in the cockpit SoC market in China will exceed 5% in 2025.