Well, we have answered the first question about market growth, now how about market maturation?

Market maturation can be viewed in two ways:

Google Glass is gaining more interest.  The product will not be officially available to consumers until early 2014.  However, devices have been delivered to developers. 

CNET got its hands on one for a teardown.  Except the teardown didn’t go much further than a few pieces that could be easily removed. To get to the processor or memory would require destroying the plastic housing.  At a retail price of about $1,500 that is not likely to happen.  What has been figured out comes from Google’s specs, software developers and debugging tools.

Well, the title is a little facetious, but given all the recent acquisitions in the 3^rd Party IP market, it may certainly feel like that to some people. You can relax, there are still plenty of IP vendors left in the market and that won’t change anytime soon.

So what is going on?

There are hundreds of semiconductor fabs, spread all over the world. The trend over the past several years has been one of consolidation into several main manufacturing centers in the Asia/Pacific region, the United States, and Europe. Unfortunately for the industry, many of these fabs are located in areas prone to earthquakes. Some locations are also at an added risk of damage from tsunamis generated by earthquakes.