Being an important and key semiconductor part, power management is crucial to portable devices. Power management IC usually consists of integrated type and separate type. Of which, the former can be called as PMU. In a multimedia player, the price of power management IC is only behind that of core decoding chip. In a handset, the cost of power management IC ranks the third after baseband and memory.

When it comes to portable electronic devices nowadays, handsets has the most shipment. Thereby, the market of handset power management IC draws much attention from lots of manufacturers.

PMU is the key component essentially necessary for handset semiconductor platform.  Any manufacturer of mobile phone semiconductor platform owns PMU technologies and products, which is significantly valuable for domestic handset semiconductor manufacturers. In the field of handset baseband, manufacturers such as Spreadtrum and T3G etc should realize that handset semiconductor; baseband in particular, must carry out platform strategy. Only platform strategy could meet quicker shipment, lower cost and better performance. Besides baseband, MPU and RF are necessarily required as well.

Connection between Handset PMU and Handset Function Modules

Each function module in handsets requires interactive cooperation of divers PMU devices.

Power management system in mobile phone is illustrated below.

At present, while light LED drive and PMU are prevalent in handset power management. It is easy for manufacturers to access into LDO field. However, market opportunities are shrinking as the successive entry of Taiwanese manufacturers. In addition, more and more LDO are integrated in mobile phone PMU. Thus, experts advise to look on in LDO field. DC/DC converter system is also integrated in PMU. Nevertheless, it is hard to be integrated into digital camera and DV in which motor drive part resides. The purchasing rights for digital camera and DV groupware are almost under control of Japanese and South Korean
manufacturers. Thereby, experts also advise to look on.

At present, 30 manufacturers or so are involved in the production of white-light LED drive IC worldwide.

With regard to handset PMU, it is a kind of IC which is integrated with several DC/DC converters (always 2-3), LDO (always 6-14), protection circuit and electric capacity test, etc.
PMU merits lie in the simplified designing and less area covered in PCB board due to reduced components. PMU defects: 1. Low upper limit of supporting voltage; 2. inflexible application; 3. high cost.

PMU is mainly applied to the products with long lifecycle, single module and large shipment, such as smart mobile phone, PDA and IPOD. But domestically manufactured handsets are as usual changed externally instead of internally, mainboard in particular. Thus, the prospect of PMU is still promising.

There is another kind of PMU aiming at MP3, digital camera and PMP. For MP3 player manufacturers with more attention on dimensions and power consumption, integrated PMU is better than separate power management IC. As the focus of MP3 market rests with product price, manufacturers are mainly concerned about costs, resulting in few PMU for MP3 player in the market. However, MP3 competition, especially high-end MP3 will be of more size, more function and performance in the future. Therefore, power management IC aiming at MP3 still has growth potential. In addition, it is easy for manufacturers to enter this field because power management IC of MP3 player is comparatively simple. Currently, competition of this market is not so intense.

2 White light LED drive
2.1 Corporate overview of white light LED drive IC manufacturers 
2.2 Principles of while light LED drive IC
2.3 Examples of series drive white light LED

3 PMU
3.1 Brief introduction to PMU
3.2 Platform adaptation power management IC
3.2.1 Qualcomm
3.2.2 Freescale
3.3 Non-platform power management IC design
3.4 Examples of power management IC (not for handsets)

4 Separate power management devices
4.1 Brief introduction to LDO
4.2 Case study of LDO
4.3 Inductance switch power
4.4 Capacitance switch power 

5 Power management IC industry and market
5.1 Power management IC semiconductor market worldwide
5.2 Power management IC market in China
5.3 World¡¯s power management IC industry
5.4 Power management IC industry in Taiwan

6 Power management IC manufacturers in Mainland China
6.1 Harbin SG Microelectronics Co., Ltd
6.2 CYT
6.3 Shenzhen Mei Xin
6.4 Xinyuan Technology
6.5 Xi'an China-core Microelectronics
6.6 State Microelectronics
6.7 APSemi

7 Power management IC manufacturers in Taiwan
7.1 Richtek
7.2 APEC
7.3 Anpec Electronics
7.4 GMT
7.5 AIC
7.6 System General
7.7 AME
7.8 Lattice Semiconductor

8 Overseas power management IC manufacturers
8.1 National Semiconductor
8.2 Texas Instrument
8.3 Maxim
8.4 FairChild Semiconductor 
8.5 ON Semiconductor
8.6 Intersil
8.7 Ricoh
8.8 ST
8.9 Micrel