Microcontrollers are supportive and important components in all of the major electronics end-markets, and they are most prevalent in automotive and industrial designs, although they are increasingly being utilized in the next-generation products emerging from the communications and consumer markets, as demand is increasing for cost-effective solutions that also provide more complex processing at a lower rate of power consumption.

In embedded systems, microcontrollers are utilized instead of general microprocessors for space-saving, cost saving, and for other design reasons. Often where microcontrollers are used, fewer chips are required to perform given functions. Microcontrollers can also be integrated with DSP, power management, and networking capability.

The greatest consuming applications for microcontrollers can be found in the automotive market, in powertrain, airbag control modules, and body electronics. They also have a substantial presence in the industrial market, where they are found in smart card applications, operator interface, PLCs, control infrastructure, and in medical applications. This market continues to be driven primarily by the automotive and industrial consumption segments, although communications applications are now contributing significant growth, coming from the latest cell phone and "smartphone" designs.

The microcontrollers market will likely exceed a value of $12 billion for 2010. For this year, Databeans is expecting 11 percent revenue growth. Microcontrollers constitute a relatively consistent components market for generating revenue. Top microcontroller suppliers include Renesas, Freescale, NEC, Infineon, Fujitsu, and Microchip, with a combined market share of about 60 percent.