In a bid to boost sales and challenge Texas Instruments Inc’s dominance of digital signal processor market, Analog Devices Inc has added new chips to its consumer product road map for motor control devices. Phil Davies said Texas Instruments owns the disk drive DSP market but that Analog Devices wanted to own the appliance control market. He valued the total available market for DSP-based appliance controllers – chips that control certain processes in consumer devices such as washing machines, refrigerators or air conditioners – at a million units in 1999 but said it will grow to 50 million by 2001. Many of ADI’s new part types are designed to compete head on with TI’s C24x series, a low-cost DSP line for motor controls. Other competitors in this arena include Intel, Siemans and Hitachi. ADI’s new line up includes the ADMC328 series (for devices like washing machines) and the ADMC331series (for heating, ventilation and air conditioning applications). Also due in 1999 is the ADMC50 series designed for industrial control applications, like robots and machine tools. Meanwhile, the company’s share price fell more than 9.5% yesterday after it announced that sales for the third quarter, which ends August 1, could be around 10% lower than the previous quarter. The firm attributed the decline to slow sales in Asia and general poor market conditions in the semiconductor industry. ADI’s full results are expected on August 19.
