Marvell Well-Positioned for When Ethernet Gets ‘More Prolific’ in Cars, Says CEO

Marvell Technology landed “multiple design wins” in Q1 for its automotive Ethernet and Wi-Fi products with U.S., European and Asian car manufacturers, said Matt Murphy, CEO of the semiconductors supplier, on a Thursday earnings call. Though those wins aren’t expected to contribute “meaningful revenue” until 2019 and beyond, “they do represent an important milestone in Marvell's progress in the automotive market,” said Murphy. Marvell sees its “momentum continuing to build” in automotive Wi-Fi/Bluetooth “combo chips” and in “PHY” (physical layer receiver) chips for Ethernet functionality in the car, he said in Q&A. “The way to think about the traction” that Marvell is getting in the automotive space is that “it’s very broad-based in nature in terms of geography” across “all three major regions” of the world, he said. It's also spread widely across “multiple customers and OEMs as well,” he said. “Having been involved with automotive for quite a bit of time, almost 10 years now, going back to 2007 when I got really involved with my old company, this concept of Ethernet in the vehicle was around even then,” said Murphy of his past executive service with chip supplier Maxim Integrated. The “vision” back then of “actually upgrading that legacy bus in the car,” by connecting all the disparate electronic control units “on one packet-based network, is starting to happen,” he said. “And so we feel like we’re in a good position as Ethernet becomes more prolific in vehicle.” Since that business isn’t expected to really flourish before 2019, “we’re not quantifying any revenue yet or sizes,” he said. “But you can imagine we’ll begin to talk more about that as we make progress towards these production ramps.” The design wins Marvell landed in Q1 are “just the signal that we’ve got leverage from our existing R&D efforts that we can apply into adjacent markets that are growing very fast,” he said. “We think automotive is one of those markets for us.”