Market Trends of Europe Flash Memory Industry
Automotive to grow with significant CAGR
- Automotive is expected to hold a significant share in Europe flash memory market during the forecast period. The European automotive sector has become one of the significant leaders in the global industry due to its numerous regional contributions, including those from Germany, the UK, and other nations. For example, according to the KBA motor transport authority, the total number of fully electric car sales in Germany increased by 44 percent to 57,980, representing a market share of 22.3% in 2022. Due to the high demand for electric vehicles, new-car registrations in Germany jumped 31% in November 2022.
- With the advancements in automotive computerization continuing to progress, flash memory is seeing use in a broader range of various automotive applications. The new high-performance automotive applications such as infotainment systems, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), instrument clusters, and drive video/data recorders boost the demand for compute scalability resulting in increasing demand for low latency and high storage bandwidth.
- The next-generation self-driving cars or autonomous vehicles utilize various sensors and sensing cameras, which generate a huge amount of data every second and demand high-performance storage, such as flash memory, which is expected to push the market towards a growth trajectory. In line with recent trends, many players are expanding their product portfolio for automotive applications. For instance, LPDDR Flash memory was launched by Infineon Technologies AG in April 2023 to provide reliable, safe, and real-time code execution for automotive and zone controllers.
- Newer cars increasingly feature digital instrument clusters with an auxiliary display or an embedded dashboard that displays the meter indicator on-screen. The size of embedded displays has been expanding significantly as digital instrument clusters today often have 12-inch or larger full-HD displays. Accordingly, these larger displays are increasing the amount of content that needs processing, which, in turn, implies that the embedded flash memory on controlling MCUs alone cannot handle the load. External high-density flash memory is needed to support today's state-of-the-art digital instrument clusters, increasing the demand for the flash memory market.
NAND Flash Memory to hold major market share
- NAND Flash Memory is projected to hold a significant share of the Europe flash memory market due to the growing adoption of smartphones and electric vehicles across the countries in the region. As per the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), during the second quarter of 2022, the region's registrations of battery electric vehicles (BEV) grew by 11.1%, reaching 233,413 cars sold. With more electric vehicles introduced into the market, the demand for memory chips for such vehicles is anticipated to grow rapidly.
- Further, the majority of countries in Europe deployed commercial 5G services, and around two-thirds of telecom operators have introduced 5G networks in the region, according to GSM Association. In addition, the UK and Germany are expected to be the leading adopter of 5G in Europe at 61% and 59% adoption rates, respectively.
- According to the GSM Association, out of total connections, smartphones will account for 84% in Germany by 2025 from 80% in 2021. In March 2022, Vodafone Germany planned to achieve countrywide coverage of its 5G SA network that utilizes 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz spectrum by 2025. The '5G+' brand will be used by the company as the service rolls out across Germany. The 5G network penetration across the country drives smartphone market growth and is likely to create significant market opportunities for NAND Flash Memory.
- Moreover, the growing number of regional data centers will create new market opportunities for flash memory vendors. For instance, in December 2022, Data Castle started building its first data center in Germany. In addition, France-based data center organization Data4 planned to launch a new data center campus in Germany. Due to the reduced cost of the all-flash arrays over the last few years, flash memory gained more demand from data centers as SSDs lower energy consumption and reduce energy costs. These factors are expected to fuel the market for NAND flash memory.