USB 3.0 Market - Forecast(2024 - 2030)

Key Takeaways

• The rising demand for high performance connection between the PC and other sophisticated electronic devices to fuel the growth of USB 3.0 market.
• Robust global sales of smartphones to drive demand for USB 3.0 for convenient transfer and sharing of content.
• Proliferation of tablet PC's and smartphones and increasing application of USB 3.0 universal docking chipsets in 4K monitors as well as in camera based applications in medical imaging is also propelling the growth of the USB 3.0 market.
• Increasing competition from Thunderbolt & Thunderbolt 2 interface technologies are likely to create hurdles for the USB 3.0 market.

Manufacturing process - Segment Analysis

The Chip on Board (CoB) manufacturing process segment has been analyzed to attribute to the majority of shares in USB 3.0 market during the forecast period 2020-2025. In ever-changing consumer electronics environment, electronic products are being designed to be lighter, thinner, and smaller. Cell phones and tablets are becoming smaller and more portable than ever before. By utilizing COB techniques to mount the USB controller and flash memory, the large PCB area typically taken up by SMT-packaged controllers and the size of flash devices is dramatically reduced, thereby facilitating significant miniaturization of the resulting USB device footprint (i.e., providing a shorter device length and thinner device width). Similarly, the IC die height is greatly reduced, thereby facilitating stacked memory arrangements that greatly increase memory capacity of the USB devices without increasing the USB device footprint. Further reduced overall manufacturing costs due to adoption of technology like CoB is expected to reduce the price of the product which in turn fuel the demand for USB 3.0. The rising dynamic capabilities and high data transfer speed of the CoB over conventional manufacturing process is likely to drive the demand for CoB in the USB 3.0 market.

Capacity - Segment Analysis

Based on capacity, 16GB-64 GB USB 3.0 is estimated to witness a highest CAGR of 22.76% during forecast period. The rising popularity of these segment can be attributed to their large storage size, great speed, high compatibility and compact size. Further affordable cost also act as a driver for this segment. At the same time, advancements in technology like CoB are making the physical size of flash drives even smaller allowing consumers to choose devices in 16 GB-64 GB storage devices. Larger storage space is preferred by more customers due to the growth in volume of digital data over recent years. These segments are likely to show phenomenal growth over the forecast period. Additionally, Continuous innovations in memory capacity is one of the major factor that is likely to create lucrative opportunity for the USB 3.0 market

Geography - Segment Analysis

The Asia-Pacific is growing with the highest CAGR of 18.3% in the USB 3.0 Market during the forecast period 2020-2025 accounting for 39% of the total market share. Continuous introduction of high bandwidth storage devices, technological advancements and emerging markets in Asia is expected to provide numerous opportunities for the USB 3.0 market to grow. The Asia-Pacific is forecasted to hold majority of shares in the USB 3.0 market owing to the sheer capacity of manufacturing in the region. A large number of leading players in the global USB 3.0 market hold prime manufacturing facilities with APAC, allowing consumers from this region to get a better reach of these products. Additionally, India and China already hold massive consumer pools in the digital electronics market allowing easier penetration for the players. For Instance, according to IBEF (India Brand Equity Foundation), the electronics market in India is expected to reach USD 400 billion by 2020 which in turn is indicating the growth opportunity of USB 3.0 market over the forecast period.

Drivers – USB 3.0 Market

• Increasing consumer demand for high speed and advanced interfaces.

USB 3.0 is third major version of USB standard for interfacing electronic devices and computers. It offers new transfer rate which is referred as SuperSpeed USB (SS) and can transfer data at up to 10 times faster than the USB 2.0 standard.  Increasing demand for robust and compact memory storage devices with maximum storage capacity and technological enhancements are the substantial driving factors of the market during the forecast period. The USB 3.0 provides support for rotating media with a new feature called Stream Protocol that allows a large number of logical streams within an Endpoint. The use of unicast and the limited amount of multicast packets, combined with asynchronous notifications, enables links that are not actively passing packets to be put into reduced power states, which allows better power management. The convenience, portability and higher read & write speed offered by the USB 3.0 will further drive the demand for USB 3.0 tech.

• Need for seamless device connectivity in a multi-network environment propels the growth of USB 3.0.

The growing focus on bridging the connectivity gap in the industrial automation space drives demand for USB 3.0 in industrial applications. For instance, USB 3.0 pen drives witness robust demand due to their ability to allow traditional hard drives to operate without speed throughput bottlenecks. One of the critical technical advances that enable modern high speed serial data links, such as SuperSpeed USB 3.0, is a data encoding scheme called 8b/10b which is proven to overcome a technical issue that arises when designing systems that use high data rates to transfer data over long distances. Further, the standardization of USB as the backbone of wired data connectivity in medical electronic devices drives opportunities for USB 3.0 in healthcare sector. The backward compatibility to USB2.0 and USB 1.1 also act as a driving factor for the technology upgrade from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 which will further propel the growth of USB 3.0 market.

Challenges – USB 3.0 Market

• Development of USB 3.2 to hamper growth of USB 3.0.

New USB 3.2 hosts and devices can be designed as multi-lane solutions, allowing for up to two lanes of 5 Gbps or two lanes of 10 Gbps operation. This enables platform developers to continue advancing USB products to fit their customers’ needs by effectively doubling the performance across existing cables. For example, a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will be capable of realizing over 2 GB/sec data transfer performance over an existing USB 3.0. With increased performance and seamless compatibility, the USB 3.2 specification brings even more speed and bandwidth benefits to new USB 3.2 devices, while remaining compatible with USB 3.0 and earlier devices which creates hurdles for the growth of USB 3.0.

Market Landscape

The global USB 3.0 market is dominated by top ten players such as Microsoft Corporation, SanDisk, Intel Corporation, Samsung, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Kingston Technology Co LLP, LaCie S.A.S., Seagate Technology LLC, Transcend Information, Inc. and HP Development Company, L.P. Product launch is the key strategy adopted by the prominent players in the USB 3.0 market.

Product Launches / Collaborations / R&D activities

• In January 2018, Western Digital launched three new products at CES, including a wireless SSD, a compact rugged SSD, and a high-capacity USB drive. The wireless SSD version ups the ante with an integrated SD card slot. Capable of read speeds up to 65MB/s, the device features a one-touch copy button for easy off-loading of photos and videos from cameras. The compact rugged SSD is pocket-sized and SSD features read speeds up to 550MB/s and capacities ranging from 250GB to 2TB. The Ultra Fit USB drive has read speeds up to 130MB/s and works with both USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports.
•  Intel Corporation introduced the Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 on November, 2018, at Intel AI Devcon in Beijing. IT is designed to build smarter AI algorithms and for prototyping computer vision at the network edge, the Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 enables deep neural network testing, tuning and prototyping, so developers can go from prototyping into production.
• In May 2019, Samsung Electronics has launched two new USB Type-C power delivery (PD) controllers for more efficient charging. The SE8A and MM101 meet the latest USB specification, USB-PD 3.0, for fast-charging. They will be able to authenticate whether a connected device is certified with USB-PD 3.0 and can charge accordingly.