Electric vehicles and energy harvesting will be big drivers for the analogue semiconductor business over the next two years, says Bob Swanson, founder and executive chairman of Linear Technology.
"Electric and hybrid vehicles are predicted to be 10% of the total car market and I expect we'll be doing significant business in this areas within two years," Swanson told Electronics Weekly at Electronica today.
"We're really at the tip of the iceberg, it could go either way but I expect new battery technology to drive it," said Swanson.
The other analogue market with big potential, says Swanson, is energy harvesting.
"I didn't even know what it was two years ago. Now I can see it being worth millions of dollars of business to us in two years," said Swanson.
Potentially it could be a very big market. "But it will be may be 10 years or more before it is really big," said Swanson.
Swanson sees energy harvesting as an ideal analogue market because the very low voltage devices which can make energy harvesting feasible are what he calls "the missing link".
"Developing the analogue block that'll work off the 10-20mV outputs from the energy harvesting transducer is the missing link, we have it now and it opens up so many applications," said Swanson.
"Then your mind starts to work and you say hey this could be the basis of a form of perpetual motion machine, the potential is really that great," said Swanson.
"But that is really looking 10 to 20 years ahead," said Swanson
In the shorter term Swanson has seen the market come back very strong from the 2009 downturn. There is some softening in the market in the last quarter but he believes the fundamentals are still strong.
"If we level off as we are now then Linear will be a $1.5-$1.6bn company next year and that will be the first big growth year for a while," said Swanson.