MEMS : Motion Sensors for Consumer & Mobile Applications

MARKET TRENDS.

The inertial sensor market for consumer electronics is growing very quickly due the fast adoption of accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers in mobile phones, tablets, game stations, laptops…. Indeed 20.3% annual growth is expected: from $847M in 2009, the motion sensor market will reach $2.56B in 2015!

The MEMS accelerometer market will show very nice business opportunities in the coming years. Moreover this market will be strategic because many applications are expected to rely on 3-axis accelerometer + 3-axis gyroscope in a single package within 2015. There is thus a strong synergy between accelerometer and gyroscope technologies and players.

The market for gyroscope is really booming thanks to the successful introduction of 3-axis devices by ST Micro and InvenSense. While adoption in handsets is only starting to surge (with iPhone since June 2010 and now with Android smartphones), the gaming market quickly grows and additional markets emerge like tablets or remote controls.

Compasses are also gaining strong market traction. 2010 was an incredible year for digital compass in handsets, but the market will find growth outside of the mobile phone area as well: on gaming, on DSC for advanced geo-tagging… It will be particularly interesting to monitor the strategies of newcomers to compete against AKM who is leading this market by far.

Competition is gaining in intensity as the motion sensing market becomes increasingly attractive. More than 50 companies are targeting this business including large players and small companies. But in the consumer market only a few companies are really doing a nice business, the others ones are struggling to make a decent profit.

Several levels of competition are shaping the market:

• Competition among companies which are trying to offer a complete product family (accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers), either internally or with partners (ST is partnering with Honeywell for example on electronic compass)
• Competition among devices: accelerometer, gyroscopes and electronic compass can do provide similar functions, either alone or in combination with each other. So companies have to propose the best sensor or sensor combination for a dedicated function
• Hardware competing against software: companies such as Movea start to impact the traditional supply chain model by bringing a novel expertise in software and sensor fusion
• Competing business models: fabless companies (InvenSense for example) are competing against integrated device manufacturers (ST, Kionix, Panasonic, Epson Toyocom, Freescale…). Optimization of the production cost is one of the biggest key success factors. It is thus necessary for all players to work hard in order to really get the costs lower and produce on 8 inch wafer lines at a reasonable yield.
• Technology competition: companies are proposing discrete devices (a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis gyroscope…) or sensor combination (acceleration sensor plus gyroscope, gyroscope plus electronic compass…) either in a system-in-package or on a single die, along with a transition from a sensor offer to a solution offer (with sensor fusion).

This area is exciting and still far from being mature. We expect significant evolutions in the next years as illustrated by the strong demand for more precise and long-term navigation solutions, including indoor pedestrian navigation. In parallel to the current race to develop ultra-low cost versions of motions sensors, few start-ups are working on revolutionary motion sensing technologies by using different sensing principle or different way of combining motion sensors, with compatibility to a low cost production infrastructure.

The objectives of this report are the following:

• To provide market data on motion sensors for consumer & mobile products: key market metrics & dynamics:
• Unit shipments and revenues by type of sensor
• Average selling price analysis and expected evolution
• Market shares with detailed breakdown for each player
• To provide a deep understanding of motion sensor value chain, infrastructure & players for consumer business:
• Exhaustive list of players for each device under consideration
• Analysis on the new players and potential new entrants with MEMS technology
• Analysis on the strategies of the main players (12+ key players: ST, InvenSense, Bosch…) and defi nition of the different business models
• Description of the value chain, impact of the technical evolutions: packaging challenges, software challenge…
• List of key integrators worldwide and corresponding product platforms
• To provide application focus on application focus on key existing markets and most promising emerging ones: new features, technical roadmap, insight about future technology trends & challenges:
• Functions that are used, new features and specifi cation requirements
• Performance roadmaps with functionalities (e.g. for gyroscopes: from current devices used for stabilization, gaming and user interface to very low-drift gyroscopes used for true pedestrian navigation)
• Integration roadmaps: combo sensors (IMUs…), integration of MCU integration of algorithms & software
• Insight about future technology trends & manufacturing challenges: evolution of front-end MEMS manufacturing, new packaging technologies…