Who can take charge of the next semiconductor wave?

What does the Internet of things mean for innovators in the next generation of semiconductor industry?

Looking at the development curve of the previous semiconductor economy, and according to the theory of "creative destruction", we can find out the development rule of this wave and speculate who will become the new leader of this wave.

Looking at the evolution of the past 70 years, it seems likely that the leading semiconductor companies in the mobile market will naturally lead this transition to the Internet of things. But the rhetoric and the dark flow of capital mean that there may be a completely different situation. The early emergence of the wave of innovation was determined by semiconductor technology, but the latter was more determined by the speed at which the market was adopted and penetrated-socio-economic effects. With the transformation of discourse and leadership, one can see the signs of this curve change.

This semiconductor innovation curve looks like a complete curve with a long time span, in fact it consists of several short curves. The formation and cohesion of these curves constitute a new perspective. Observers have made changes to these curves to create a graphical version that shows the timetable for modern technological change driven by semiconductors.

The last wave of "social media" is very interesting. Many new Silicon Valley companies have become famous for their wealth by minimizing infrastructure and hardware development, focusing on software and leveraging mobile users as content providers. TSMC's pioneering fabless revolution has created the free airing of smartphones and tablets, and has successfully unleashed a wave of social media.

If the internet of things is not the next wave of innovation, then we will be in big trouble. From new investments and acquisitions, the power of personal computers, the Internet and social media has been depleted. Once the Asian market is saturated, these technologies really reach every single individual. PC Curtain Call, disguised as a PC tablet in the form of two, the use of people's replacement needs and tablet users to seek greater processing performance needs, so that can support a period of time, but do not have a wave of innovation needed enough power.

I prefer to believe that we are in the early stages of the Internet of things, created by the actions of sensors, big data, cloud computing infrastructure, open source software, and manufacturers. Venture capitalists and funders are scraping three feet in search of the next big event, but so far they are still touting some niche markets. The last wave of innovation has seen them hit the stall wall too, as the company that is attacking the internet of things is smaller and less noticeable.

It's going to pour cold water here. Chris Wasden of Utah State University recently said: "The mobile giants Apple, Google, Samsung's long-term lead to the internet of things is almost zero."

He's right. The Silicon Valley company, which is in the forefront of these innovations, will find it rare for companies to have a commanding vantage point in two successive waves of innovation. Where are those companies in the defense industry era and in the small-scale logic era? Texas Instruments is among them the most famous, after acquiring the national Semiconductor has grown up. Apple has had a lasting brilliance in shaping the PC market in the process of a helping hand, but did not rise to a dominant market share, its rebirth and brilliance is mainly in the post-PC era. Intel and Microsoft are also very close to this brilliant, they lead the PC era, open the door of the internet wave, but in the traditional view, in the mobile/social wave, they are lagging behind.

As far as industry watchers are concerned, none of our companies has ever maintained its leading position in two successive waves. However, this does not mean that no company can maintain leadership across times and go further in the innovation curve. Moreover, important substantive changes in the supply chain may break the historical rule that leadership cannot be continuous.

In creative destruction, it is much easier to remain on the sidelines than to try to catch the next wave of adventure. Four companies have missed a wave of innovation, and they are Intel, IBM, BlackBerry and Microsoft if they are to seize the internet of things and have the opportunity to rebuild their leadership.

While many headlines are exaggerated, such as "Intel exits the mobile market" and "Intel will not exit the mobile market", the point is that Intel's investment so far in the mobile market is in vain. Less obvious is how Intel pursues its own creative destructive form and adjusts the entire company (not just a department) around the Internet of things. Daniel Nenni passed me a copy of Intel's Investor report on the Internet of things, which has this slide showing the scope of responsibility for each manager.

Intel is determined to invest in its processor technology across all three levels of the Internet of Things: endpoints, gateways, and infrastructure. They bought Wind River, supported Android, Linux and other open source organizations such as the Industrial Internet Alliance, the Open Interconnect Alliance, to make them unique in the IoT world.

At the same time, GlobalFoundries acquired IBM's wafer Fab division and took over many of the company's semiconductor operations. After Apple turned to arm architecture and brought a drastic-style hit to the power architecture, applied Micro also began to make a note on the arm core, Avago acquired LSI, so that Freescale became Power.org's last component of silicon.

IBM's core business today is the cloud platform. Bluemix is a huge platform-as-a-service project that is not just an OS overlay on a bunch of servers, but rather a complete capability to build and run applications. Behind Bluemix is IBM's IoT infrastructure, which provides a way to ingest device data through MQTT, which provides strong support for IBM's analysis and judgment, which is critical to extracting valuable data from billions of of millions of sensors.

It seems strange to say that the BlackBerry missed the social wave, that it created the mobile mailbox market and built a secure infrastructure. But they may be able to make an interesting story of the Internet of things, from abject poverty to riches to abject poverty to riches. They acquired QNX, and then persevered to "connect the car" and finally won the return, and recently robbed Ford, the big customer. Once again, we saw a case in which the entire company was fully tuned for the internet of things, and this time they deployed the IoT market with an ion program.

Microsoft is lurking in the corner. They are mired in creative destruction, and Microsoft faces $ billions of in revenue losses as the PC and Internet markets penetrate, and it is hard to overhaul the company's existing assets. We don't yet know the true value of Windows 10 for the Internet of things, and perhaps we'll be knows by the time Microsoft announces its overall strategy sometime in 2015. In addition, support for the ARM architecture, tailoring adaptability to smaller devices, and the ability to compete with open source products are critical.

ARM may be an exception to this pattern. The company manipulates the semiconductor supply chain and business model in its own way. Thanks to the support from a number of MCU vendors, ARM also has a lot of space in the sensor field, and can continue to use this advantage in the Internet of things wave. Their success and advances in EDA and IP have led to competitive-GPU/DSP/FPGA, other MCUs and SOC cores from all sectors. They are unlikely to be able to replicate the 95% per cent share of the mobile market in the IoT market.

Apple and Google have also adjusted their supply chains, but have found that the barrier to IoT is much harder to conquer than expected. In an environment where all things must work together, Apple is clearly highly closed, and Google is more resistant to privacy. They have their own standards for success in the Internet of things, but they are unlikely to dominate in the long run. One possible way to do this is to peel off a separate IoT unit, such as Nest, which was created by Apple's ipod father in Apple mode and later acquired by Google, and could eventually become an independent company.

Another view is that the internet of things will be a fertile ground for entrepreneurship. Certainly will make money, but want to maintain sufficient stamina will need to solve the bigger problem. Most startups are short-lived, solve a technical problem and quickly cash in, and if a small company can make a big social and economic progress, they can consolidate their leadership position in the Internet of things.

From Kurt Sutter There is a sentence: "History does not lie." With a history of these loud names, arm has a good head, and we may see new company names Shining and gaining prestige in the IoT market. The future of Intel, IBM, BlackBerry and Microsoft will depend on their plans for the past few years, and on the massive reorganization of the Internet of things. Once, as the industry routes and programmes mature, the IoT leaders begin to become clearer, creating a wave of creative destruction that the parties will be forced to reassess and re-adjust for the next cycle

Who can take charge of the next semiconductor wave?