MIPI Ecosystem talk at Seattle this week

Sunday 8, March 2015. D-day minus one before the MIPI Alliance Face to Face meeting, starting in Seattle on Monday 9[SUP]th[/SUP] for five days. MIPI members are joining from all around the world to attend this one week meeting. If you take a look at www.mipi.org you will see the names of the 263 members from MIPI. A strong ecosystem has grown around MIPI technology since the Alliance creation in 2003. If you rank these 263 members by categories, you find SoC and Peripheral chip makers, OEM-ODM, IP and VIP vendors or Test equipment suppliers. That’s already a vibrant ecosystem! Add Test Services, Design Services, Education and “Others” and you have the complete MIPI Ecosystem.

And I will present during the opening plenary session in Seattle the results obtained after six weeks fascinating work. Doing such research is all about methodology; in this case it was two phases work. During the first phase I had to compile about 30 criterions by company to build a complete data base. The second phase was honestly much more fascinating than the first one. I have processed this large amount of information to find the characteristics specific of this MIPI ecosystem. As soon as the data base is available, just running Excel can answer many questions and this aspect of the research is fascinating! I can tell you that I run Excel in many ways, crossing the criterions and even doing some differential analysis, extracting the real trends from the ambient noise (like in analog electronic).

New MIPI Members by Year of Membership
To reserve the fresh information to the MIPI members who have travelled to Seattle like I did yesterday, I can’t show more than these two pictures. Just for your information, this “MIPI Ecosystem 2015 Survey” includes 35 pictures and most of these are more complex than the above one, going deeper into the ecosystem (trying) answering many relevant questions like:

• Who are the newcomers, what market segment do they target: mobile, PC, IoT, wearable or/and Automotive?
• Which MIPI specification (s) tends to be used in IoT and wearables ?

And many more questions about IP vendors, OEM, VIP vendors, SoC chip makers… and so on. Moreover IPnest did the same research in 2012, so I could measure the parameters defining the ecosystem evolution. Exploring the time dimension allows bringing a new bunch of answers, certainly useful for the marketing people working at these 263 companies, the MIPI members. If you are working for one of these, you should be able to read this survey (for free) as it should be distributed to every member… just wait for a couple of weeks!

Sorry, I just have to leave my hotel room to find the right conference room, to fine tune the two presentations I will make on Monday and Tuesday. Once again, this research was fascinating, and I have no doubt: MIPI technology penetration has been strong (in mobile first) and the pervasion in other market segments has started in some of these or is just a question of time for the others…

MIPI Alliance has organized an Open and Demo Day (non-MIPI members are welcomed) this Thursday 12, March in Seattle, at Renaissance Hotel… see you there!

From Eric Esteve from IPNEST