Many creators of IP are small companies, offering mostly one type of product and some variations. The worldwide IP revenue, therefore, is distributed across many companies and, with a few exceptions, is mostly below $10 million annually, per company. Competition for "smaller" IP such as simple I/O has devalued most of this type of intellectual property as some semiconductor vendors and foundries are offering the cores as an incentive to do business with them.

This report presents In-Stat's analysis of the 1999 worldwide IP market shares by market segment and function, covering complex, function-intensive cores rather than technologies. During 1999, reusable IP objects generated $565 million, with the communications segment leading at 31.2% of the total revenue.