The Petrov Group Advantage

The Petrov Group, LLC, is a four-partner strategy consulting and market research firm. Our focus is on the profitability and growth opportunities of technology companies.

We provide insights and information that are otherwise not available; our contribution to clients is immediate and lasting.

Our key and unique competitive differentiation, an inherent part of our report offering, is post-sale free-of-charge service.

Our report service provides:

Our approach combines top-down and detailed bottom-up analyses – product by product line, vendor by vendor, segment by segment. The results of such demanding studies are invariably two-fold:

We have conducted our work with the highest standards of independence and integrity since our founding in 1981; we have a strong and continuous track record of meeting and exceeding client expectations.

Because we routinely deal with important issues of corporate strategy and competitive interaction, internal security and integrity are our highest priority.

Our work is based primarily on our own primary research; our work and findings are our own. Our work starts where the typical mainstream contribution of market research firms ends.

What’s New

NEW — July 2010

The Petrov Group has introduced in-depth reports on the power management strategies of two preeminent Power IC vendors — Linear Technology and National Semiconductor. Unlike other leading Analog IC vendors, both companies remain focused on internal manufacturing only, using a large number of proprietary processes in legacy technology nodes.

NEW — June 2010

Articles regarding GF, IBM, ARM, Samsung, TSMC, Abu Dhabi dynamics:

● The National     ● XbitLabs    ● The National
   June 20                 June 21           June 13

NEW — April – May 2010

The Petrov Group completed three in-depth reports reports on power management strategies of leading Power IC vendors — Texas Instruments, Maxim and Intersil. Significantly, all three are in the forefront of the industry transition to 180nm power technology platforms.

NEW — May 2010

Article: Symbiosis Between Globalfoundries and IBM Needed for Long-term Success, says Petrov Group.

● Part One      ● Part Two

Article: Globalfoundries impact and evolution could be significant, says Petrov Group.

● Part One      ● Part Two

NEW — February 2010

The Petrov Group introduces a new landmark report in its Power Management IC Series that focuses on the high growth opportunities for IC vendors and wafer foundries in Digital Power ICs titled:

● Digital Power ICs – High Growth
   Opportunities for IC and Foundry Vendors

The report is based on our primary research of 22 vendors. It removes the hype and misunderstandings regarding this complex and highly attractive Power IC market. Although not new, the market has now entered a high-growth stage driven by new applications and the emergence of power buses and focused fabless vendors – the 2009-2014 growth of its various market segments ranges from 30% to 50% per year.

This landmark report is a companion report to our Analog Power Conversion ICs report which focuses on analog power ICs. The two reports are offered as a bundled package – at a 25% discount for a single-user license and at a 40% discount for an enterprise license.

● Analog Power Conversion ICs –
   Enabling Power Management Applications 

The findings in all our reports are based on bottom-up analyses of vendor product offerings; only such an effort can result in a pragmatic and independent validation of market size, growth, and especially of market segmentation. A unique and differentiated feature of our published reports is that they are supported by an unlimited free-of-charge and client-confidential after-sale Inquiry Service.

The Petrov Group, LLC, is a strategy advisory firm focused on the growth and profitability of technology companies. Our clients include most IC and system companies worldwide.

NEW — October 2009

The Petrov Group introduces a new landmark report in its Power Management IC Series titled:

● LED Driver ICs for Displays and Lighting –
   From Cell-Phones to Street Lights

The report focuses on LED driver ICs and wafer demand in 18 key lighting and display applications; it is a case of two major reports in one.

The report provides competitive analyses and competitive overviews based on a detailed bottom-up analysis of 25 IC vendors – their LED IC product portfolio, business performance, and technology and manufacturing trends.

The report also addresses the market dynamics and trends: market segmentation, segment penetration, and growth and size during the 2008 to 2013 period and beyond. The explosive growth for LED driver ICs is truly unparalleled – thirteen device types among the 18 analyzed will have an annual growth exceeding 45% through the year 2013. Moreover, at that time several mega-markets will still be only in their initial high growth stages.

NEW — September 2009

The Petrov Group introduces a new landmark report in its Power Management IC Series titled:

● Power ICs in Portable Devices –
   Markets, Vendors, Technologies and
   Integration Trends

The report focuses on IC integration trends for each of eleven power applications in twelve key device types. There are six power IC integration domains in handheld and portable devices; each requires a specific product, technology, and market approach.

The market for power ICs will continue to be of major strategic importance to most end-system and IC vendors. Insights into the integration domains of power ICs explain, for example, why a 60-transistor power IC often exceeds the price and profitability of a PMU with hundreds of thousand transistors. There is a strong correlation between vendor gross margins and the type of power management ICs they target.

Power management ICs in portable devices alone represent nearly 40 percent of total analog IC revenues reported by WSTS. The market includes a large number of typically “uncounted” ICs—in 2008 the number of power ICs ranged from about twenty in Notebooks to about seven in Bluetooth headsets.

NEW — August 2009

The Petrov Group introduces a new
 report titled:

● ICs for ESD and EMI Protection –
   Markets and Integration Trends

This “hidden” market was already nine times larger than reported by WSTS statistics in 2008. Moreover, there are profound changes in the semiconductor ESD and EMI protection market, specifically its accelerating transformation and migration – from Discretes into ICs

The IC-based integration trend of ESD and EMI protection solutions will significantly increase the total market within a relatively short period – driven primarily by high-speed interfaces and mobile applications. The emerging IC-based ESD and EMI protection market creates numerous high margin and high ASP business opportunities. Report analyses of two pure play vendors illustrate the financial and risk implications in opposite approaches to the ESD protection business.

NEW — July 2009