NXP CEO says Google will make NFC a success

Before this year unless you were in the know, you may have never heard of the Philip’s spin-off company NXP Semiconductors. However, since Google launched its Nexus S and revealed its Google Wallet software, the brand has been thrust into the limelight and become synonymous with NFC. In an interview at NXP‘s headquarters in Eindhoven, CEO Richard Clements has given an interview about the future of NFC and the company’s other focuses. Surprisingly NFC chips and software are not what the company sells most of and nor does it feel that NFC will account for a large margin of its sales in the years to come.

NXP feels Google will double the sales of its NXP Semiconductor near field communication chips in the next couple of years

For NXP the NFC scene looks particularly rosy with NFC expected to double in demand in 2012 and then again in 2013. Clemmer said “Google will make NFC a success this time.” That can already be seen as the media fever pitch about NFC is building by the day and as billions and billions are invested into it. If NFC gets much bigger, before any actual services have hit the market, it may soon be declared to big to fail and the U.S. government may have to bail it out. Hang on, banks, inflated values, lots of private company‘s investing in an idea – haven’t we seen  this movie before?  Hold on to your tax dollars, this may be a rough ride!

NFC is expected to contribute less than 1% of sales for NXP Semiconductors

Clemmer said that he doubts NFC will ever count for more than 9% of it sales. The company‘s overall sales reached $4.4 billion in 2010. Other technologies are expected to afford better growth. He gave an example that the “authentication market” could be bigger than NFC, but that would not eclipse the Smart Home market, which focuses on chips for lighting, home automation and smart metering. Clemmer feels the smart metering market could reach $4.5 billion by 2015 alone. However ,Clemmer did add that NXP is working with most smartphone manufacturers, so we should see some NFC-enabled smartphones coming our way in the not too distant future.

NXP shares that GreenChip is the next big thing

Before we get to have an NFC smartphone in our hands the NFC inventor is looking forward to the next market. GreenChip technology is a technology that allows you to remotely control aspects of your home or businesses’ electricity consumption remotely with the use of, yeah you guessed it – your smartphone, tablet, PC or laptop. Turn off a light, turn up the air conditioning when you are not in, turn it back down before you get home, you get the picture. In principle it is very similar to ZigBee’s functions only at greater distances. As NXP not only makes the chips but also builds the software and security systems around its chips we can expect some nandy dandy apps coming in the next couple of years that will allow us to monitor our energy consumption and change it from wherever we happen to be. We’ll need it to pay the extra taxes from NFC (too big to fail comment above).

NXP Semiconductors expects the overall semiconductor market to grow by 8% to 9% this next year and hope to outpace that by around 50%, but with China’s economy cooling Clemmer says he does worry as Asia accounts for around 60% of the NXP’s sales.