NORDIC SEMICONDUCTOR BLE tracker indicates NOD gain Upon compiling the Q4 2017 data from our proprietary tracker of the Bluetooth SIG database of BLE certifications, we find that NOD gained market share in the number of products certified. NOD’s BLE ICs increased 15% YOY versus a 4% YOY decline for the total number of certifications across all BLE IC vendors. We also find notable design wins for the company during the quarter.
Nordic Semiconductor gained market share in certifications. We have compiled the data from our proprietary BLE product certification tracker. For Q4 2017, it showed that 123 new products were certified with the Bluetooth SIG based on Nordic Semiconductor BLE ICs. This implies 15% YOY growth in number of certifications, versus negative 4% YOY growth for the overall number of certifications across all BLE IC vendors.
NOD design wins include Lenovo, HTC, Walmart, Assa Abloy, and Garmin. Out of the 123 new products based on NOD’s BLE ICs, we find design wins with Lenovo (wearable), HTC (virtual reality), Walmart (selfie stick), Assa Abloy (smart home), and Garmin (wearable) particularly notable. These are in addition to the design wins we highlighted in our previous report ‘So far, so good in Q4’, including NOD customers such as Google (wearables), Fibaro (smart home), OSRAM (industrial lighting), Logitech (HID), Bayer (healthcare), Chicony (HID), 3M (industrial), NETATMO (smart home), Disney (wearable), and Roche (healthcare).
Overall number of BLE certifications down 4% YOY. While NOD increased the number of certifications 12% YOY, the total number of BLE certifications across all IC vendors decreased 4% YOY. While we note that this is not a volume-weighted representative of the development in the market in terms of number of units shipped, we do believe this slowdown in the number of certifications is definitely something to follow closely going forward. On a last-12-months basis, the total number of BLE certifications has now fallen from 52% in Q1 2016 to 11% in Q4 2017.