Accelerometers set to become leading MEMS device in 2013

EL SEGUNDO, USA: When you turn your iPhone to the side and the screen automatically adjusts from portrait to landscape view, there’s an accelerometer at work. When you swing your Wii controller and bowl a virtual strike, there’s an accelerometer at work.

Indeed, accelerometers in recent years have emerged as a critical input device for some of the world’s hottest electronic products, causing shipments to boom. This will make accelerometers the top-selling Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) device by 2013, according to iSuppli Corp.

The global MEMS accelerometer market will expand to $1.7 billion in 2013, up from $947.7 million in 2007, as presented in the figure.Source: iSuppli

“Due to this rapid sales growth, accelerometers by 2013 will displace the current leading MEMS products—inkjet heads and Digital Light Processing (DLP) chips—to become the dominant type of MEMS device sold worldwide in 2013,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, principal analyst, MEMS, for iSuppli. “Consumers’ desire for motion-sensing in smart phones and video game systems will boost demand for accelerometers.”

The boom in accelerometer demand will come as a boon to the health of the overall MEMS market. Although global MEMS revenue will decline by 8 percent in 2009—the second decline in market history following a 7 percent decrease in 2008—accelerometers will still manage 1.8 percent growth. Accelerometer revenue will rise by 14.1 percent in 2010 and will maintain double-digit percentage growth in 2011 and 2012.

“A major catalyst for the rise in accelerometer sales is pricing,” Bouchaud noted. “Accelerometers broke the magic $1 barrier in 2008, making them attractive in a larger number of products. Their prices will continue to decline in the coming years, widening their appeal beyond smart phones to reach the wider mobile handset market.”

In 2009, revenue from consumer and mobile applications for accelerometers is expected to exceed that of automotive applications. Until now, Automotive has been the biggest application by far for accelerometers, but this area now is suffering from the global collapse of car production.

Automotive applications accounted for 40 percent of global accelerometer revenue in 2008, down from 78 percent in 2006. In contrast, consumer electronics and wireless accelerometer revenue rose from 22 percent to 58 percent during the same period.

STMicroelectronics rides consumer wave to top of accelerometer market
In 2006, the top five accelerometer suppliers -- Freescale, Analog Devices, Bosch, VTI and Denso -- almost exclusively served the automotive market. However, by the end of 2008, STMicroelectronics had taken the lead in accelerometers based on its significant success in supplying the burgeoning consumer and wireless communications markets.

STMicroelectronics’ global accelerometer revenue rose to $220 million in 2008, up by nearly a factor of eight from $29 million in 2007. The company’s accelerometer market share rose to 20 percent in 2008, up from 4 percent in 2006.

MEMS inertial sensors market: Business potential and key challenges

LYON, FRANCE: Yole Développement has released its new report dedicated to MEMS accelerometers, gyroscopes and IMU Market from 2008 to 2013. The French consulting company has presented its marketing and technological analysis on MEMS inertial market with a strong focus on the consumer market.

How is the consumer electronics changing the MEMS motion sensor industry? Does the Automotive market affect the MEMS Inertial suppliers? Yole updated its figures, marketing and technological trends. And for the second time, the market analysts are giving today its expertise on the market, which is the one of the most important in the MEMS industry.

Motion sensing devices are not new. They have been used since the 50s in aerospace and defense fields for navigation functions. MEMS versions of accelerometers and gyroscopes have only been developed more recently, bringing two key advantages: cost and size reduction.

While not as accurate as the devices used for military applications, MEMS‐type accelerometers and gyroscopes are well adapted to be integrated into cars and many consumer electronic products. MEMS accelerometers have been extensively used since the 90s in light vehicle airbags, as crash sensors.

Since then many other devices have benefited from the use of motion sensors. The latest and most striking examples are their use in Nintendo Wii game controllers and in Apple iPhone and iPod devices.Source: Yole Développement

MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes: already a 1.80B$ market in 2008
MEMS inertial sensors now represent a serious business: “752M units of MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes were produced worldwide in 2008, corresponding to a 1.80B$ market already”, says Laurent Robin, MEMS Market Analyst at Yole. “The major part of this market still comes from automotive applications; however consumer applications should overtake this by 2011”, explains Laurent.

This is not only due to the current downturn which is impacting the automotive world: massive use of accelerometer and gyroscope is likely to stay limited to current established applications such as airbag, ESC and TPMS.

The annual growth rate will be limited to 3.6 percent up to 2013, compared to 21.1 percent for the consumer area. Indeed, the adoption rate of motion sensors on many consumer electronics products is rising faster than ever.

For example, Bosch (including its Sensortec division) and ST Microelectronics are leading the global MEMS accelerometer market with about 35 percent of market share together. Indeed, STM has recently benefited from key contracts such as the one with Apple. Its main challengers are ADI, Freescale, VTI and Infineon, and new players continue to enter the market.

From the gyroscope side, three players dominated the market in 2008: Bosch, Systron Donner and Panasonic had, on average, 20 percent market share each. However the automotive part of Systron Donner shut down in the beginning of 2009, which is greatly impacting the automotive electronics field.

Cost and intelligence are driving development of future product generations
Successful MEMS providers will be the ones able to deal with this changing economic landscape.

Some devices now integrate MEMS sensors as a commodity product. In other cases, integration of MEMS is driven by regulation and the user is not willing to pay a price premium for additional sensors. Pressure on cost is thus enormous in the last two cases. Successful players are the ones able to decrease manufacturing costs.

One strategy is to produce on 8” infrastructure. This has been chosen by several players: ST Microelectronics, Bosch Sensortec (Fab is ready, but not in use yet), Freescale, TSMC (foundry service).

Other players have moved to a technology renowned to be more able to handle cost reduction. A nice example is Panasonic which has successfully moved its gyroscope production from quartz to silicon substrates.

When it comes to very high volumes, big IC players are often preferred. Besides been able to sustain high price pressure, they are used to delivering very reliable products, to managing efficiently the supply chain and to ramping up production easily.

Being able to add intelligence to the sensor is also a means to offer strong product differentiators. From supplying only a component, many players are now supplying a solution. Algorithms are commonly integrated at the chip level: for screen rotation, drop detection… This is why a company such as Kionix has been successful in the HDD protection market: notebook free‐fall scenarios have been successfully implemented.

Providing software and system development around the sensor is also essential. It is thus not surprising that in many companies today, more people are working on the software side than on the process side!

MEMS Inertial Sensors Market 2009 Report will be available in June 2009, The catalog price: EURO 3,990 (single user license).