A presentation from Ian Drew, vice president of segment marketing at ARM, due to be shown to financial analysts and investors Wednesday (May 23) showed that, according to its own estimates, while ARM has a market penetration of 80 to 90 percent in the mobile phone handset market, across a broad swathe of relevant markets, including mobile phones, it averaged only 21 percent market share in 2006.

Drew highlighted five key growth areas for ARM between now and 2010. Four are areas where ARM processors are seen less often. Namely: set-top-box, high-definition television and DVD systems, solid-state and hard disk drive storage, automotive electronics and 32-bit microcontrollers.

In these areas in 2006, ARM had market shares of 14, 20, 5 and 13 percent respectively, providing scope for improvement Drew's slides said. They are also market sectors that will represent a total available annual market of nearly a billion cores or more each in 2010. The biggest annual market opportunities are likely to be automotive and 32-bit microcontrollers at 2.0 billion and 1.9 billion cores each.

It is also notable that, with the exception of microcontrollers, these are areas where chip average selling prices, can be higher than ARM is likely to see in mobile phones in the future.

ARM's fifth key target market is the smart phone, where it is already enjoying success. In this area the company shipped 250 million units in 2006 and has a market share of 83 percent, according to its own estimates. However, as smart phones are set to offer an opportunity for multiple core design wins in 2010 ARM has said it will target the smart phone also.

A presentation from Simon Segars, executive vice president of business development at ARM, due to be given on the same day as Drew's, provided the technology-driven side of the coin. It was entitled "Opportunity beyond the microprocessor"

Segars' argument was that multimedia is well-suited to the intellectual property business model, that ARM already has graphics and audio processors, and that multimedia could be a "repeat of the ARM story."

The slides could be found here when this story was first posted.