It has been over a decade since Counterpoint Research started tracking connectivity technologies and the entire supply-side value chain – from design wins to portfolio capabilities, and how the suppliers are working with OEMs/ODMs from the end application demand side. One such supplier in the wireless connectivity space, which has been leading in many end markets, is Nordic Semiconductor. At CES 2025, Neil Shah, Vice President of Research at Counterpoint, sat down with Vegard Wollan, CEO of Nordic, to discuss Nordic’s strategies, focus areas, portfolio evolution and progress since he took over the company’s reins almost a year ago.

The Interview

Key takeaways from the discussion

• With marquee design wins across high-profile customers and products in consumer electronics, Nordic is a clear leader when it comes to Bluetooth LE connectivity. The company has ambitions to replicate this success in Wi-Fi and cellular IoT applications.

• The offerings range from SoC-based solutions from compute to connectivity and support power management circuitry.

• Nordic is aiming to grow in double digits in 2025 and targeting segments beyond consumer, like healthcare, medical-grade wearables, asset tracking and industrial IoT, promising long battery life as a differentiator.

• Expanding leadership in the smartwatch and smartphone markets will be a key focus area as well.

• Wollan highlights the importance of AI-driven efficient edge computing for real-time decisions and the company’s recent product launches that offer substantial performance improvements with lower power consumption.

Analyst takeaways

• Nordic has built quality products and garnered great design wins across multiple consumer products.

• Growth in the long-tail healthcare, enterprise and industrial IoT products and bigger CE products such as smartphones and PCs will be the key to driving scale for Nordic.

• Partnerships will be important here and also how Nordic can add an SDK layer and work closely with developers to accelerate solutions for the connected AI world.

• New technologies such as Bluetooth Channel Sounding and Wi-Fi sensing are hot and will expand opportunities in the PAN connectivity space.

• The Cellular WAN connectivity market is undergoing a sea change as China’s heavy cellular IoT module and chipset industry is driving consolidation in the Western world (See here – Telit-Cinterion, Sierra-Semtech, u-blox, etc.) and opening up the opportunity for Nordic to enter some cellular applications, especially Cat-1 bis, LTE-M and eventually 5G Redcap, to compete head-on with Western chipset vendors Qualcomm, Sequans and Sony Altair.