Since 2000, we have entered the age of sensing and interacting with the wide diffusion of MEMS  and sensors that give us a better, safer perception of our environment. MEMS have grown in volume to be almost a 15 billion units market today. And we believe that this market will double to almost 30 billion by 2020, in less than 5 years! (Source: Status of the MEMS Industry, Yole Développement, May 2015). 
Claire Troadec, MEMS & Semiconductor Manufacturing Analyst from Yole Développement (Yole), the “More than Moore” market research and strategy consulting proposes you to learn more about the MEMS & sensors challenges and identify the related opportunities for the next decade. So what can we expect?

Claire Troadec’s presentation took place at the MIG Technical Congress, in Munich, Germany:

Full presentation is available on i-micronews.com, presentations section.

 Since its early beginning, MEMS technology has been considered as a “transfer function” technology: taking existing products such as Hg tilt sensors, syringe, galvanometric mirror and transforming them in IMU , micro-needles, micro-mirrors. The interest of MEMS relies in the miniaturization and lower cost manufacturing brought by a semiconductor technology.

Today the MEMS & Sensors industry is transitioning towards 3 main hubs: the inertial hub (a closed package hub), the optical hub and the environmental hub (open package hubs)

Looking closely at the inertial hub, complete integration has been achieved at sensor level. The miniaturization race is still ongoing to lower the sensor cost and developments are focusing on advanced packaging technologies (e.g. TSV , WLP ) and power consumption reduction. Major developments occur at software level to achieve sensor fusion and get precise data acquisition, precise tracking within the environment. Hence the inertial Bill of Materials within a smartphone today is around US$1.

This is nothing compared to the US$10 spent for the optical hub within the same smartphone: Imaging is highly valued by the end customer. This is part of our “human” nature, where vision represent around 83% of our external world perception . 

And what about the environmental hub? At Yole, we do believe that the environmental hub is an interesting way for the MEMS industry to gain value. Therefore, particles, gas detection are real market pull applications which would make sense to be integrated in a smartphone. Some more integration could also be achieved by combining pressure and microphone for example. Of course, this increased integration is not an easy task but represents real market opportunities. Today’s environmental sensors’ Bill of Materials in a smartphone is around US$0.70 and could represent US$1.50 tomorrow with this increased integration path.

The MEMS Market is observing a strong paradox today
Increasing volumes driven by the consumer wave (more and more smartphones sold and more and more sensors integrated in smartphone) leading to sensor die size reduction to answer the strong price pressure dictated by the consumer market. But this affect sensors margins, which shrink if the process is not re-tuned to gain on margin again. Overall resulting in a stable or declining market in terms of value!

Thus is the MEMS industry digging its own grave with this commoditization paradox? How to exit from this scenario?
Well, one might take a step back and look at what the CMOS  Image sensor industry has achieved. Driven by the self-love or narcissism of human kind, the front cameras of our smartphones have increased in resolution for us to achieve better quality images of “selfies”: Hence the front camera resolution has been increased by a factor 4 in 4 years, thanks to increased number of pixels and thus sensor die size, leading inevitably to higher sensor prices!

What can we learn from this story and apply to the MEMS industry to gain value?
More complexity at system level: drive for better accuracy/precise tracking and features, meaning:

  • Sensor fusion
  •  More integration: Pressure + microphone for example
  •  Improved environment tracking: particles and gas sensing

MEMS markets challenges are thus evolving
Power consumption is becoming a major trend while mobiles, tablets, wearables have to survive for long periods on battery while interacting with the environment (voice calls, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS , sensors …).
Sensor fusion, software and added features are the current battleground of the hubs integration path.
Finally the user case is definitely mandatory! The idea is to start with applications, and work downwards to the chips needed to support them. This will be easier for a system maker than a pure sensor player who is further away on the supply chain and thus further away from his final end user needs!
In brief a new virtuous cycle is needed for the MEMS industry to gain value and stop being limited by shrinking prices and margins.

Yole’s analysts highlight the MEMS market evolution and technology trends within the report Status of the MEMS Industry, yearly updated (2015 edition available on i-micronews.com – 2016 version to be released soon). Moreover make sure you will meet our analysts and debate with them at:

Stay tuned with Yole’s team!

Source: www.yole.fr

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