Can Stand-Alone ISP Business Be Profitable?

Just a few years ago we have seen quite a few ISP companies pursuing different business models from stand-alone in-camera ISP chip sales to IP licensing. It appears to me that this business model is fading out. Here are some recent examples:

• NuCore tried to build successful ISP business for 10 years, finally acquired by Mediatek in 2007
• Zoran is rumored to have stopped development of its APPROACH series of mobile processors and laid off the team. The company is still continuing with its COACH processors for DSCs.
• Nethra Imaging is rumored to change its business model, abandons general ISP market and is going to pursue niche opportunities.
• Atsana reportedly had closed its doors about two years ago 
• DxO is rumored to be unable to turn its ISP licensing into a profitable business and is looking to be acquired now
• Sunplus has reportedly closed its stand-alone ISP operations a few years ago
• Freescale, Quanta are rumored to abandon their ISP efforts before bringing the product to market 

I put all of them in the same basket, even though many would disagree. There are significant differences between the companies: some of them are purely ISP vendors, while others integrate many more features together with ISP. Still, to me this is the indication that stand-alone ISP, either as silicon product or IP block is not an attractive business model anymore.

There are few more ISP vendors that are still trying to survive:

• Mtekvision remains profitable over recent years. However, I'm not sure if its in-camera ISP business is still profitable.
• inSilica has few customers for its ISP IP blocks
• Silicon Image has some limited success, mainly selling ISP IP to baseband processor vendors.

And there are few other vendors that I'm not sure how their business is doing:

• Core Logic appears to use its ISP knowledge in multi-function application processors. I do not think it produces stand-alone ISP anymore. 
• Anyka - the status is unknown to me
  
• Lite-On, Novatek - I'm not sure what is their status, looks like their stand-alone ISP projects are discontinued
• Silicon Hive - the rumor is they are not successful on the camera market
  
• AIT - I'm not sure what is the status of its ISP now
• Spiral Gateway announced a disruptive ISP technology. Looking at others, it might be not that easy to sell these days. 

So, it looks like stand-alone ISP market which was quite crowded just few years ago, becomes almost empty now. All the ISPs are integrated either onto sensor SoCs, or onto application processors, camera control processors, baseband processors or somewhere else. Sounds obvious now, but few years ago there were claims that a really good ISP is too big to be integrated. It appears those claims were wrong.

Update: There are few other ISP vendors I forgot to mention initially:

• Omnivision has its TrueFocus implemented on the separate chip, together with other ISP functions.
• Sony ISP supports high speed features. I believe it will not be needed once application and baseband processors integrated ISPs become faster.
• ST ISP family - I'm not sure why ST does not integrate them. One of ST ISPs has DxO EDOF integrated.
• Fujitsu Milbeaut ISP family is actively developed. 
• Ambarella - I'm not sure they are successful, sales-wise
• Sightic - niche player, mainly on security market with some unique features, like HDR support