The acquisition of Israel-based Mobileye will assist Intel to take the driver’s seat in the complex autonomous car market, says Akhilesh Kona, senior analyst – automotive semiconductors, IHS Markit.
After Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP, this event represents a major change for the automotive supply chain and will put Intel in a prevailing position for the autonomous car market.
Through the $14.7 billion acquisition of Mobileye, Intel will solidify its position in the autonomous driving supply chain through Mobileye, which is the leader for front-view camera processors with around 80 percent market share.
Intel earlier acquired companies such as Yogitech, Itseez, Movidius, Nervana and Altera and Arynga, to address the key challenges required for automated driving including performance (Cyclone, Atom, EyeQx), functional safety (Yogitech), artificial intelligence (Movidus, Nervana) and over-the-air updates (Arynga).
Through Wind River’s acquisition, Intel could already offer operating system, security competencies and a complete open source platform to address the scalability requirements and complexity of forthcoming in-vehicle electronics.
For autonomous car architectures, Intel now has control over key automated driving building blocks including object recognition, sensor fusion, path planning, localization (Mobileye’s Road Experience Management) and, last but not least, connectivity and telematics.
According to IHS Markit, the merged entity will be able to address the core elements of the self-driving cars: sensor fusion and front-view camera, whose combined system revenue is expected to reach $10 billion by 2022 from $2 billion today, with a CAGR of 28 percent.
IHS Markit forecasts as many as 21 million autonomous vehicles will be sold in the year 2035.
