Infineon Technologies AG (IFX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

It's my pleasure to introduce Infineon in our conference call that we will discuss the Internet of Things, or IoT, as many of us know. I've got Adam White, Head of PSS, we've got Thomas Rosteck, Head of CCS. And with that, I'll pass it over to them, who have got some interested slides to go to.

So thank you very much, Lee, and from our point of view, from Thomas and myself and Infineon Technologies, thank you very much for your keen interest in our IoT road show, and we look forward to providing a short and precise update on our strategy related to IoT. And at the end, of course, we'll allow time for Q&A. So if we now get into the agenda. Next slide, please. Okay. So next slide, please. So let's, first of all, talk about the logic of the major megatrends that we see in IoT. On the left-hand side, you can see very much some incredible statistics. For example, 127 devices every second eventually actually going to the Internet for the first time. You see now the amount of devices estimated to be about 43 billion. That is up from a staggering number already in '22 from being 30 billion. At the bottom right, we see the statement 112 million IoT malware attacks worldwide in 2022. And of course, those are the reported ones. And here, Thomas will provide a little bit more context on now customers really are putting security at the forefront of all of their design considerations. Of course, from an Infineon perspective, IoT plays within our complete product and solution portfolio, but it also solves many challenges that we see from aging society, resource scarcity, of course, the new concept of new work. And of course, now with the complexity of the mega cities that we see on the planet. Next slide, please. So here, within the vision of Infineon Technologies, we're very proud to be really enabling digitalization as well as decarbonization. And here, from the statistics, we see from digitalization can contribute to 20% CO2 emission reduction by the year 2050. And on top of that, of course, through digitalization, we know that we can limit the areas of CO2 emissions in the areas of resource optimization, environmental monitoring, which we're going to give some examples later, energy efficiency and supply chain optimization. Next slide, please. Next one. So Infineon at a group level. In 2022, you are aware that our revenues were EUR 14.2 billion. Here, myself representing PSS and Thomas on the CSS. You can see how IoT is actually contributing to both of our revenues from a division perspective, even more so in the CSS area, where we will give a little bit more context on the technology solution offerings that we have. Revenue growth contribution, as you can see in the top 5. You can see here IoT is definitely one of the core focus areas for us. And through the cycle rates of the divisions, approximately 10% revenue growth for PSS and CSS, but most importantly, IoT, we see growing greater than 10%. Next slide, please. So from the market growth perspective and I must emphasize that this is actually the CAGR growth in units. So here, there's 11% CAGR growth on the total market that we will be looking to address as Infineon. And here, the unique sales and value proposition, we break up into these 4 core areas. And we'll provide tangible examples of why these 4 areas are so important to us and our customers. And here, we'll be talking really tangible examples related to bill of materials by some of the examples that we bought with us. So let me start on the top left, ecosystem development. IoT is, of course, a very broad market that we will highlight and show, but at the same time, we need platforms and ecosystems partnerships to make sure that we can service, one, the huge amounts of customers, the diversities of applications and making sure we can scale with their needs. On the product system, we will show very clearly why Infineon is very proud to have product capable IoT devices but more to the point how we could be value so that our customers really see us as being a go-to extension to their R&D engineering team for IoT. Security is paramount. It is now becoming at the forefront of many of our customers' discussions, and we're very proud with the history that we have with security, and Thomas will talk about that to really be a leader and in the security area. And of course, the broad markets. Here, we talked about and show you in a moment, applications as well as the customer base and how we've got to ensure that we support all of their needs. Next slide, please. So we just wanted to really highlight why we gain our strategy around providing solutions and system solutions to the IoT market. If we start to the left-hand side is we call step 1, it's very clear that Infineon, we're very proud and when we were stand-alone before Cypress, we had sensors, we had power. And of course, we could go in and position ourselves and quite frankly, a product level. Then as a management team and as a group organization, we realized that we were missing topics related to connectivity, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, for example. We also recognized we didn't have the market addressable within the micro controller. And on top of that, we also wanted to ensure that we had software capabilities. So here, we were very successful in bringing on our Cypress Semiconductor on board. And now, of course, the synergies between the 2 organizations allowed us to not just only sell the Power & Sensors, but also topics related to the MCU as well as our connectivity. Then moving forward, as we -- and this -- by the way, sorry, step 1, step 2 was approximately $2 to $3.5 per bill of material, of course, definitely levels of contribution. Our strategy as a company is to move from product to system. And as you can see here in step 3, this is what we call system sell. And here, we believe, and we have got tangible examples we bring together today to demonstrate that actually by coupling with all of the products that we have now on board with the M&As noting, for example, Cypress and then Thomas will provide a couple of other examples, that we can now have up to EUR 10 of BOM content. Basically, the more value that we bring in, then, of course, the customers recognize that and we can position a value proposition. And then ultimately, the solution sell. There is definitely a trend going on now. We see now an acceleration of Edge compute. We see acceleration of making sure that AI and machine learning capabilities are available at the Edge on the actual IoT systems themselves, and Thomas will really do a deep dive to give yourselves confidence that our customers are really recognizing our value proposition at the edge AI as well as machine learning. Next slide. So again, what I will do is really focus next slide on the left-hand side. And here, before we get into the details on the security, the Actuate, the Sense, the Compute and the Connect. I will do a deep dive on some examples of the real-world applications that we are addressing. Next slide, please. So as we have highlighted before, it is a very complex domain that we actually are addressing. Many applications and again a lot of diversity in those applications. If we just go forward, if you mind, 2 slides, piece, if you just click. So here, we've got a number of cluster of applications, namely on the smart home, on the smart building, IoT, for example, automotive, health and lifestyle as well as consumer. And it's very important to also note that IoT is not just consumer. You can see the size of the markets that we are looking to address. And if we go one more slide, now you can see the level of complexity that we've just shown on some of the applications that Infineon Technologies are serving. Next slide. Now here for us, we'll bring in these examples, just to show you how our strategy is paying dividends, moving from the product, going up to the system and then the solution, how we can add more BOM content, and of course, be a one-stop shop for our IoT customers where they have confidence that all of the interconnects of all of our solutions provide them time-to-market and confidence and making sure their products are secure. One key topic is whilst there is a lot of applications, one thing is very important to note the actual fundamental architecture of IoT is within reason similar as well as scalable. Of course, when we talk about sensing, there has to be different use cases that we need to tailor our sensors to make sure that we get the right input into the compute domain as an example, but we can actually come out with a number of reference boards to support an array of applications. And quite frankly, that, of course, allows further scalability as we develop our solutions with the customer base. Next slide, please. So what I'd like to do is just provide a couple of examples and really talk about the growth of the market in units, talk about the bill of material, which I'm sure will be of interest of all of you and then just some customer names that we're proud to say that our partners of ours. And of course, we've successfully completed design wins with. So let's now talk about smart thermostats. As you can see here, by the year 2023, after, the year 2028, effectively doubles the unit growth CAGR growth. More importantly, look at the solutions now we are working with, with an array of the customers that are doing smart thermostats. The bill of material in the days gone by when we talk about IoT, we -- going back to just selling a discrete technology, as I highlighted earlier, maybe EUR 2. Now with the smart thermostats, the billing material that we are capturing with the Infineon solution mainly in the areas of the sensing, the compute area for the system and motor controls, adding the connectivity with WiFi, Bluetooth with the security, we're actually capturing approximately $14 per solution. So that is, again, a major contribution to us. Let me provide another example. This next example is on door locks. And again, there's a tremendous growth, 4x growth in the same time line from -- for the unit's growth up to a CAGR of 33%. Here, for the smart door locks, again, it's really interesting to see as we connect with those customers traditionally doing door locks. So let's choose Yale as an example, which I know is a heavy user here in the U.K. and Europe. Here, they were traditionally, of course, more of a mechanical company, but now they are, of course, adding more value to their customer base by coming in with a lot more semiconductor content. And we're proud here to be working with them and the other customers, August, for example, and others, where we can again add our solutions. And we believe that there's a BOM potential of around $12. The next example I'd like to bring is actually domestic robots. These robots are now becoming very, very intelligent. For example, domestic robot in the area of vacuum cleaners is just one example. Here that those vacuum cleaners are now showing, of course, giving huge benefit for us personally. And on top of that, we also see the growth rates. And on top of that, we need to make sure when robots are mapping out the room to make sure that they efficiently clean the room. On top of that, they save battery power. You do not want any of that data to be, of course, available outside your privacy. So again, security is another topic with connectivity. A big BOM material of $15. Well, last slide before I hand over to Thomas, here, we are also investing, and Thomas will talk a little bit about some of the M&A activities, as I alluded to, but here is a predictive maintenance example. We haven't got design wins at the moment, but we've got a lot of target customers that we are looking and we will be talking to, and look at the BOM in this pictorial here that we believe there is a significant BOM around $40 that we can approach those customers with, with, of course, our solutions. Next slide, please. So as you can see here, whilst there is an abundance of application, diversity of applications, I brought there, we brought there some examples to show how we can scale and support those customers and those diversities of application. Next slide. So as I've now completed the real-world applications, I now hand over to Thomas to really do a deep dive on why Infineon is at the core of IoT.

Okay. Thank you. And when I went after Adam has shown us some very good examples how we can develop here, I would come back to the 4 success pillars that Infineon basically has. So abstracting from the examples that you just have seen, you see here, again, the components that Infineon has, Infineon, so not just 1 division, right? So you see here all the ingredients and Infineon is one of the broadest portfolios for these ingredients to make an IoT device. So it starts with the sensing, right, making the IoT device environment area, if you will. So basically, allowing it to see, to smell, to measure those things, and then, obviously, you compute this result, you need connectivity to the cloud, for example. And then you actuate. Actuate obviously means power devices that turn a motor, switch on a light or any kind of reaction that the IoT device is connected. One super important thing is on security, as Adam mentioned, and I will come to this in a second again. So that's kind of the, call it, the P2S portion of it. So with these components that we have here, we have the ability, as shown in the examples to move from a single product to a system play here. One critical component, obviously, in this is the software and the ecosystem that we now will talk about. So let's zoom into this for now. Next slide, please. So on the left side, you basically see this ecosystem that we are providing. And the ecosystem consists, on the one hand, of a toolbox of development tools that customers can use to program our devices. This ecosystem, this toolbox, we call, ModusToolbox. And that's actually one of the things that we acquired with the Cypress acquisition. But it's not only the development tools. There's also a lot of software that is already ready to be used. So for example, there are drivers for radars available in there. There is a motor control software available in there. So a lot of things the customers can basically just pick in place in for their own software solution. What's additionally in this is also the community. So we have an offering where customers can basically ask their questions. They get help there in this. So on the one hand, it's an outbound possibility to support our customers. On the other hand, it's also a very valuable source of intelligence for us to understand what's happening out there in the world. With this, the ModusToolbox, we can also make sure that things are compatible across our hardware products and that we have a high level of interoperability in there, whether you use an XENSIV, whether you use a PSoC going forward. We also have cloud services that we are providing, for example, object ID, where I can give an IoT device a more diligent own identity, which is necessary for authentication for business in the future. So this is about the ecosystem, and the ecosystem is important for two reasons. The -- if you look at a typical design, then the microcontroller is usually one of the first components to be decided upon for an IoT device. And this decision is also depending on the ecosystem on the availability of kind of support because that in the end also determines your time to market, what you can already pick off. And then after this, decisions are made on other components of that what you basically need going forward. So why is this -- or how does this relate and for us also going forward? On the right side, you see Infineon's customer pyramid. So starting from corporate accounts going down to mass markets. And especially, the core accounts and mass market is customers that we usually don't have a direct access to, so we have to go through easy-to-integrate components. And this easy-to-integrate components not only comprises out of hardware but also out of software components that make it just easy to get in. I'll give you an example. To integrate WiFi chip into, let's say, a coffee machine -- so a coffee machine is also need to be connected nowadays, but the coffee machine maker usually is pretty good in making good coffee and know how to do this, but has not so much knowledge usually about connectivity. So they usually can't work with WiFi chip only. So what they need is basically a module. This module also needs to be certified, so quite some requirements to this. This module that can be just easily integrated into this IoT device in the coffee machine, and also the software that's necessary to it. So this then -- and Adam showed these 4 pillars. So the broader market pillar is clearly one of these -- one of the targets that we need to evolve. Why is this go-on-a-market for us in important? Because especially in the field of IoT, the number of customers out there is way bigger than other applications. So there's a lot of customers that are coming up with devices, and we need to provide them with easy to integrate and easy to find solutions. Go to the next slide, please. So we are doing this also by shaping this IoT ecosystem, especially to make sure that we have this easy-to-use and easy-to-integrate solutions. How do we do this? So first, we are heavily engaged in standardization. Standardization for us is key to success, not only for Infineon, but for the industry to make things overall happen. So for example, one of the things that was big out there last year was Meta. Meta is the standard for the smartphone. So how all the components of a smartphone can interact and interconnect and work together. In Meta, there's also a definition -- so for example, there's a definition how smart cameras will work, how is smart thermostats will work, how smart locks will work, how smartphone appliances will connect and so on. So this is a critical piece of it. The second, we also work with ecosystem players trying to understand where they're going and also how we can support it. Adam alluded on the IoT security bodies. Why are the IoT security bodies important? And we talk about security bodies. These are usually government organizations. Governments are engaging in IoT because they see that there is a high need to make sure that IoT devices have a certain level of security to not be -- to not make the whole ecosystem vulnerable. So I was 2 months ago at a White House event, where the U.S. announced the U.S. cyber trust mark as an IoT label that companies can basically apply for, go through a certain certification and get this. This is already happening today in Singapore. There's efforts ongoing in Germany as well in Finland and also the EU. European Union is working on that. So we will see this as a recommend. The benefit of that is that security will be a visible feature even on the box, right? I've seen the boxes that the U.S. cyber trust market and how that's going to look like, so that the consumer can do an educated decision on the level of security he's going to buy. So my personal view it, it will become a negative differentiator to not have sufficient security in an IoT device in the long run. Last but not least, we have also a partner system. Partner system to implement and to scale into the IoT market. And we see examples here, how we obviously service that. So currently, we have -- as you see, more than 7,000 active IoT customers there. You see some names here. And we have a pretty good opportunity pipeline of around EUR 10 billion. And this is all based on the success factors that Adam has shown. Now I want to change to one topic that was also in the middle of this product and system picture that you have seen. This is about AI, artificial intelligence. So we see a little bit -- a new wave of digitalization in principle, meaning the digitalization is moving from the cloud into the Edge. Additionally, to this move, we say -- we see artificial intelligence as one of the -- or Edge artificial intelligent as one of the key enablers for IoT because it's offering new opportunities, things that we couldn't do without that. Why is this digitalization happening? And why is Edge-AI now possible? It's possible because we get a lot more processing power at the Edge. So even microcontrollers have very more processing power than they had years back. And so that's the foundation for having the performance that you need to do this. So if you look at the benefits of this Edge AI, so one thing is about latency. There's quite some applications that can't allow for delays, right? So they need basically instant responses and deterministic responses. That's something that you obviously can provide if you don't have to connect with the cloud and can actually work in the device itself. It's about high power efficiency. There's obviously one thing that the transfer of data into the cloud is costing a lot of power both in transmission as well, obviously, then in computing all of this in the cloud. So when we at least can partially move things to the Edge, we will overall save quite some power there. And last thing, Adam already alluded to, is about improved security and data privacy. I think a lot of users will feel way more comfortable if their data is actually processed in their device under their control and not every data is going past. So that's some advantages that Edge-AI is providing. And on the right side, you see the predicted growth there and Lee just brought on a nice paper on Edge-AI, which I think is a pretty good picture of how things will go. If you go a bit more specific on the next slide. So we basically put this AI into our products. We optimize our products for this Edge AI. The obvious thing is with the MCUs putting it in there and having the capabilities in there both from a hardware and also from a software perspective. But also for connectivity and sensors and other products, we make sure that they kind of fit in into this ecosystem that we are providing. In the ecosystem itself, the ModusToolbox is again the main focus -- focal point for our customers to kind of tools development in there. And I think all of you know that we have acquired a company called Imagimob in Sweden like 4 months ago. And Imagimob is providing as an Edge-AI company. It's providing a perfect tool chain for both experienced and not-so-experienced users to create their own model. We announced yesterday that we have embedded the Imagimob tool chain into ModusToolbox. So from now on, it's also possible to kind of do this from one source there. But we are not only working within Finland. We also work together with partners because it's really broad topic. So you see here some partners that we kind of work and additionally will work on digital services here. So with this, we -- I think we have a very, very good position in this starting Edge-AI opportunity. Next slide, please. And this now shows a little bit how we basically do it. So on the one hand, you see the Imagimob acquisition that we included in the ModusToolbox. And here, we have models, for example, for audio classification, meaning examples like baby cry for example, where you see [indiscernible] fall detection, especially for in smart home, how can we help elderly people to live longer self-contained at home. Fall detection could be one additional feature where we notice on the system. The smart home will notice that there might be an emergency and kind of help that, and very important topic is obviously, predictive maintenance as well. So then working with partners, the next example. So in this case, with PSoC with AIROC and the XENSIV sensors. Here, we work with SensiML to kind of -- for the data capturing and doing this machine learning and deployment of the models into the devices. And last but not least, with the other acquisition that Infineon has done last year, on industrial analytics, actually also offering services for predictive maintenance services, especially in the industrial field. Next slide, please. So with this, again, I would like to emphasize this kind of 4 success factors that Adam introduced. So the ecosystem is an important -- is the important the Predictive system approach has proven to be super helpful for Infineon focus on security and broader markets. These are the ones that Infineon is very uniquely positioned. So IoT is continued to be one of the 5 key applications. Within the Infineon Group. It's growing above average, and this unique predictive system is going to support us here. We will see -- we have seen a strong growth potential in IoT and the broad range of applications that we can basically tackle with the solutions that we have, and it's also a pretty impressive bill of material that we with again, with the P2S product to system approach can tackle. So we can address this very well with our portfolio. And we've pruned that with a lot of very active customers here and a pretty strong opportunity pipeline of EUR 10 million going forward. And with this, Lee, I'll throw it back to you.

Sure. Okay. Well, thanks, gentlemen. That's a really interesting slides and a great run through what I think is an interesting opportunity in IoT for both segments there. Quick word, if anybody here on the call would like to send in any questions on the Q&A function, please do so. I'll read them out, and we can get those to the gentleman here.

With that, however, I'll kick off maybe two for myself, maybe start with Adam, if I could. Adam, I thought it was really interesting in the sort of 4 steps or the way that you looked at some of the value step out in the process here. Very relevant of your P2S strategy as well. This additional functionality as you go through, how long does that take? And when do we have a significant minority in that sort of step 3, step 4 position, and is there a precedent for this? I mean how can we look at this?

Yes. So thank you and appreciate you recognizing. Infineon really having a desire and tangible results moving from what we call product to system. And here, it really depends upon the customer, the customer maturity. Some customers may have their own domain expertise, capabilities. So here, of course, we will be laser focused in offering them, maybe certain just product solutions because maybe they have an ecosystem themselves, et cetera. Other customers that we see a wonderful journey that when we, of course, start speaking to them. And as we start speaking to them about our leading Edge senses as an example, we can then, of course, then discuss about how to do the compute using the microcontrollers from CSS. And then from there, we can then, of course, then have the logical conversations around the security and the other areas. Now with those customers, what we found is a migration to Infineon because we have one of the world's largest, broadest portfolios for IoT, and those customers really see a benefit to get time-to-market to be reduced, and this time-to-market is very essential, especially as we know, in some of the IoT markets. And here that they have a lot of confidence and trust that when we provide them a solution, of course, then we stand behind the reputation. So really, it depends their need, but we are seeing that traditionally, when we start the conversations with the customers, those who may not have all of the levels of competency, they most definitely are leaning more and more to us. And the primary example there is what Thomas was highlighting, a lot of customers now are starting with also security topics and questions. And then, of course, that builds beautifully into the compute meaning the MCU road map and then we can nicely couple connectivity, then, of course, not only the sensor but even the areas of actuate, for example, power management.

Yes. if I may add an additional benefit for us is if you talk about to customers about solutions, you usually also have a different level of discussion, right, which is also, on the one hand, very useful for us to learn, but also super helpful because we get a broader view into what customers are doing and how we can help.

So we bring value to the customers. The customers obviously recognize that value, then we can see therefore, do value-based pricing more and more. Base pricing paying you a bigger BOM at the end of the day. Bigger BOM, and of course, the profitable revenue growth as I said.

Thomas, turn to yourself. Obviously, we're seeing numbers here with billions of connections out there and an increasing amount of work need to done in security because clearly, the threat surface is burgeoning. You touched on however our security bodies and work by governments out there. Can you walk us through what you see as an upshot from here? Do we see a greater focus around how we put out hardware in this space? Is there a minimal requirement in algorithms perhaps? How does this hit the road basically?

Okay. So Security is something that you have to consider from the beginning when you do a design of a product. I always say it's like doing a cake, once the cake is ready, it's difficult to change the flavor. So you have to think about the flavor of the cake at the beginning. And that's the same for security, right? So security is an integral part, and there are a lot of components to it. So it starts obviously with, I don't know, certain algorithms, certain hardware features to protect against attacks and so on. So for every device you need to understand what you need to protect it against, right, what kind of attack you can basically you assume it. And that's why where this government labels also give good guidance because a lot of companies don't -- are not so familiar with that and what to do and what would be the requirements. So these government label has given you a shot on what you should protect against. And you have different levels that you can basically do. What we have, for example, in our microcontrollers, we have secure and claims in there. We basically can protect certain data because it's separated from the main CPU inside of our chip. So I'm talking in some more crores in the chip or you can even have a separate solution like our OPTIGA Trust solution. This provides you then with an additional level of security. However, it's also sometimes -- if you, for example, take the OPTIGA Trust solution, it also prevents you to, as a customer to make mistakes in implementation because doing a secure implementation is not always straightforward. So there's a lot of experience necessary, and I can talk about our own experience. So that's an important piece to be considered. So what we have, for example, we have also a protocol available for OPTIGA Trust, which provides you with a secure connection to the cloud, for example, to have some extension services, right? So this has already done deal. It is not only approved by us, but also by a certification body and with this kind of tech market.

Okay. Interesting that you described the IoT as a piece of cake. So I'll start going through some of the questions that you've been kind enough to push in here. Maybe start off with some of the broader ones, key competitors in this space. Who do you look to maybe ask Thomas here. And on top of that, the size of the opportunity in pipeline for, particularly as it relates to IoT and some of the spaces you're addressing.

Okay. So yes, let's -- I think we have 2 sets of customers -- sorry, of competitors, 2 sets of competitors. The one is competitors sort of similar in offering to us. Also broad, and they are like 2, 3 out of it out there that I think you well know. We, as Adam said, we still think that we have the broadest portfolio here. And in some areas, we have really unique selling point. So I think we are very good in security. We're actually a market leader in security. Clearly, we are also -- have certain capabilities in the MCU space like CAPSENSE or capacitive sensing. So very good in touch screens and touch buttons things like that. We are very strong in connectivity, right? And we are also strong in what we call connected MCUs. So that's basically connectivity chips that have enough MCU power to kind of also be in certain devices, the main MCU. For example, in the smoke detector, the MCU requirement is -- can be covered by these kind of connected MCUs. And we are working on this to also more for more performance. So this is -- so we have also advantage, let's say, really unique selling points. The second set of competitors is more like specific ones that are good either in Bluetooth or in WiFi or working in MCU. And I think here, our clear advantage is that we can provide -- we can discuss with the customer on a different level. We are not only talking about the 1 device. We're talking about the solution, what he wants to do, how we can help them. And this is especially important for customers that don't have huge departments, but they are specifically focusing on certain areas of competency that they are good at. But even the big companies, so we have different customers here, we have big customers that basically more or less want to buy a product. And we have other big companies that basically say, "okay, we need good components, we have good things here together."

Interesting question maybe here, just come in. Really just talking around getting the idea of a highly integrated device yield superior product to a higher BOM as well. This is a supply concentration and less bargaining power for the customer. So they can see the performance and the margin coming through here versus discrete designs, and I think people are getting that. But for the customer to pursue this such a system-level design is a commitment to the space, to R&D, those costs on their side. How are you helping them mitigate some of those challenges?

From my perspective, and then I hand over to Thomas is, look, at the end of the day, we have to bring value to the customer. And if the customers then, of course, recognize the value, they can themselves, hopefully, and they do, by the way, monetize the value to their end customers. We truly see a win-win. And ultimately, we need to maintain our competitiveness whether that is on a product level to some of those environments that Thomas is alluding to a part level, but at the same time, when we go into more of a system as well as the solution level, the step 3 and step 4, we traditionally see customers very much appreciate and they welcome us in to make sure that we really help them deliver a winning solution for their end customers, brings down time-to-market. And overarchingly, I believe that they also see the benefits of minimizing complexity on their R&D side as one example.

I can perhaps give you an example because most of these customers are seeing this as complementary, right for things that let's say they have parts where they want to differentiate. So that's core for them. And that's usually what they want to do themselves and there are other things that they just need. And the one example we talked earlier about was -- we had a company that was doing a variable, you could do phone calls through bone conduction, right? Basically, you would talk through your bones interesting approach. So then they wanted to go to market and say, all the other variables out there have a payment function. You can basically just go and pay with it. We don't even know how to spell Mastercard, right? So we have a drop-in solution for variables in payments. So you get the chip, you get the module, you get the drive operating system. You get the Visa, Mastercard application. You get the pre-personalization, you get the antenna design. So for them, it was a super fast integration on something that is not the most differentiating thing for their device, but a necessary thing for the device. And this is perhaps a good example where we can really help the customers to focus on their capabilities.

Got you. I guess with the sort of broad scope of what we bring to this market, the capabilities that help for the customer, some of the features and functions that you can bundle in here with payments, for instance, as example here. How can we translate this to market share? Because you put up bonds, you put up a segmentation of the market. general connectivity, we can sort of see the bigger numbers, but the missing ingredient is clearly. How well will you do in this market? So is there -- it is difficult to give us a broad chart here, but can you give us any sort of steer as to where you expect 3 leaders, what that sort of market share range could be?

Yes. So obviously, they have seen the relevance for, of the segment. So it's one of the 5 biggest applications that if something is running. We have seen the growth vector in it. So we have still room to grow in there. And I think one of the reasons being that the acquisition of Cypress, which is one of the major levers and at least from a computation and connectivity point of view, is basically 3 years ago. So we -- I think we have a very successful integration of Cypress, right? And I think that's good. So now we're working our way to this and with this P2S approach, as I just mentioned. So the plan is to clearly grow above-market and to grab market share here going forward. And the point is, this market is growing heavily also, right? So this is kind of -- there's a lot of room to grow and a lot of different applications to be served.

With that, I think there's another question just come in here. Granted this will be a lot by product, but can you give us an idea of how quickly a client may be able to switch out products to a competitor once you are embedded in the design? So I guess this is more of a [indiscernible] not so subjective.

So let me talk about sensor, for example. So again, working very closely across the vision. We've actually now got a microcontroller family from Thomas' division. And here, now that actually houses the necessary software stacks for our sensors. And here now, that's important because some of our sensors are now really customized by use case. And we then, of course, adopt the software, the SDK, the capabilities. We obviously then put those in a secure environment in the MCU. So here is not now about just switching out, for example, a hardware. There's also software implications that, of course, brings value to the customer solution as well. So it's -- in some cases, of course, there are some sensor or some sockets that can be multi-sourced, that is very logical and part of the designs that we have to also take into consideration. But again, we do have some other designs where customers have been working with us for months and months. And we are software teams, hardware teams have been working very hard to really get the right accuracy for their use case.

Actually I like the question because it highlights one important topic, which is what I would call stickiness, right? Because if customers working with your solutions, so first, if they're working with their ecosystem and they find usually what they get -- what they need in the ecosystem, then they tend to come back. if they have a new design because then they're happy, they know how to deal with the sensor. We actually just recently rewon a design where the customer decided to not go to the next version of the connectivity device so -- but -- because we didn't want to change the software. So we basically, we sticked in his design with this. So I think from that perspective, this is also a clear advantage that we have on this whole ecosystem.

Yes. Another question here, and I want to maybe just twist it a little bit, so forgive me who never asked this because it's something I'm quite interested in the [indiscernible], if you think about Edge AI war, and particularly as you're helping customers and device makers move large language models or models that they have data sets transitioning, how does that work? How are you enabling that? And particularly as it relates to [indiscernible] and work that, that might be, that framework is doing as well.

Great question. So how do we deal with customers in this field? So first, how do we handle AI? So look, there's a few things where we do models ourselves, right? So basically, having kind of ready to use, but then we have customers coming in and they have a specific requirement on a specific application that we haven't been thought of perhaps. So -- and the Imagimob tool thing that were now integrated into ModusToolbox, allows actually to kind of do this even for non-AI expert. It also allows it for an expert to really dig deeper. So depending on the level of your own experience, you can deal with this tool there. I'll give you one example. There was an application called steel welding application and believe it or not, steel welding, there is big machines that tracks the steel. How they basically -- how they manage this is by expert listening to the machines. So I can say, okay, that doesn't sound right. So it was this and that. And this welding expert no clue about AI but basically able to now train this model with the data. And so the voice -- sorry, the audio clicks that we had, that he was kind of annotating and basically saying what that means and what you should do. And with this, he basically was able to create a model based on this tool. We obviously also help them. So we have also a team to kind of support that. And with this, we have those factors to go. But it's also -- and one thing that also comes here is, in our P2S, we can, especially on AI, we can also train the models to even be, to be good with, for example, any microphone, but the better with our silica microphone because we can tune it to this. And with this, we have an additional advantage that we can go with.

Of course. Two questions here. I'll try and push together and answer right. Would they call without a question about China, what size of the IoT business is in China? But alongside that, I think you've mentioned also about a EUR 10 billion TAM or [indiscernible] in time, how long would it take to get to that sort of scale of market opportunity?

So I can answer China, and then I'll give you the TAM. Yes. So look, whether it is China developing and deploying IoT or whether it's America, whether it's here in Europe, we just see a phenomenal wave of customer interest and the amount as I showed earlier on, 127 devices go live on to the web every single second. So is it a case that we are seeing a disproportionate amount of IoT designs in 1 region or another? No. We just see clearly an explosion of design activities that are taking place. We talked about earlier in Thomas' slide, we have approximately 7,000 customers. And of course, that translates into a very healthy pipeline there that Thomas alluded and talked about.

So talking about the TAM, so what we have shown is basically the market size that we see there. Actually, it was we showed it in volume with 11 billion units. And that is supposed to be the market in '28, so this is where we're moving. So that is basically an 11% growth, right? And then we also referred to our own opportunity pipeline, which is not yet a design win pipeline. Clearly, that's something we work on. And it shows that there is a super huge interest in that and the customer coming to us to kind of work with us on this.

Got you. And that's for the EUR 10 billion capture. Yes. Okay. Well, I think there's about a minute or 2 left. I remind everyone, if you've got any more questions, do try and throw them over. I'll ask maybe one of the earlier questions here. Someone's thanking you for the presentation. Always nice to hear.

Thank you.

So how does Infineon's go-to-market differ for IoT and Edge computing devices versus others? I spent a lot of time on that. But the reference designs and our sales channel more or less, which is important. And how does this promote revenue synergies across Infineon's microcontroller, Power & Sensors portfolios?

So if you don't mind, I would go with the just a couple of topics on the go-to-market, and then Thomas kindly will provide scalability on our ModusToolbox, for example, and software access. So here, in the go-to-market, it's a great question. Ultimately, if we really want to prove that we can go from product to system, we absolutely need our teams to be fully understanding and trained in application capabilities. And here, Infineon recognized that we can't just do this from headquarters as it were. We need to make sure that, that expertise is also in the regions close to the customer. And for that, we, of course, need an array of capabilities. We need system architects, for example. We need application engineering, for example. We need application marketing, for example. And if you notice, all of which has had application in the names. And here, we really want to make sure when we go into the customers, again, we understand and took eye to eye at an application discussion because that's where we can ultimately add value. And now maybe Thomas can make some comments.

Yes, I will basically pick up on what you just said and say this is the prerequisite to form out of this understanding of the application and out of the learning from what we have done with bigger customers on a given application and out of the information and the questions we get into our communities, right? To form them solutions that are best case, no touch designing, meaning there has to be good documentation. There has to be a good reference designs. The product has to be flawless. They have to be in a way that even companies that are not for example, security expert or not connectivity experts, that they easily can plug this. And I think this is the approach that we've been quite successful with. And this is imminent because we're talking to, I don't know, like 40,000 IoT companies. We can't service everyone personally, so we have to find this way. That's why it's a great question because in this -- all this application space, we have to find this way.

Yes. very quickly, I keep getting asked this question. Just remind us, again, the size of IoT is our current sales base in Infineon today? I think you put up to 10% or so.

Yes. So the 2022 was 80%.

80%. Great. I think with that, we can start to move towards the end there. There's some great questions came in. Thanks for everyone who stayed with us to the end over 130 still online, so that's great. Gentlemen, thanks very much. I think that was a wonderful call. And if there's any more questions, please direct it to the IR team at Infineon. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you for your interest.