PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD Accelerometers, gyroscopes, oscillators, acoustic-wave filters, digital microphones, digital speakers, and a dozen other microscopic sensors and actuators are micro-miniaturizing the final frontier in consumer electronics. This is driving the sales of once off-beat MEMS applications into the mainstream.
The Nintendo Wii started the MEMS consumer revolution by using electro-mechanical devices downsized with semiconductor fabrication techniques into tiny mechanisms for tracking the actions of their users. Now every major game-console maker, from Sony's Move to Xbox's Kinect, uses MEMS chips to track motion and interpret user gestures. Next came Apple's iPhone, which first adopted MEMS accelerometers for auto-switching between portrait and landscape orientations. It later used them for gyroscopes to enable accurate pointing and dead reckoning for location-based services.
Now touch-screen tablets are adopting the whole gamut of MEMS chips, adding 3D gesture recognition as well as all the pointing and location-based capabilities of gaming consoles and mobile phones. This is opening a new MEMS market that IHS' iSuppli claims will top $140.4 million this year, up 373 percent from a mere $29.7 million for tablet-bound MEMS chips in 2010. By 2014, iSuppli predicts that MEMS sensors for touch-screen tablets will top $280 million, second only to mobile phones in total revenue.
"Tablets are emerging as a major growth area for MEMS," said Jérémie Bouchaud, principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. "MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes play a key role in tablets, utilized not only for automatic screen rotation and tilt compensation for the compass but also for motion-based user interfaces. MEMS filters such as bulk acoustic wave duplexers are also used in 3G tablets, and pressure sensors and MEMS microphones likewise will join the fray in 2011."
Consumer and mobile devices are driving micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) chips sales, which will pass the $2 billion mark by 2011, according to IHS iSuppli.
The combined markets for MEMS chips in all consumer and mobile devices—cell phones and tablets—will top $2 billion in 2011, up 26.2 percent from $1.64 billion in 2010, according to iSuppli, with the five-year forecast predicting a $3.7 billion market by 2014—a compound annual growth rate of 23.6 percent. Other MEMS markets besides gaming consoles include cameras, projectors, laptops, MP3 players and television remote controls.
New MEMS
devices, like digital microphone arrays for noise canceling and bulk acoustic
wave filters for better reception, are boosting the fortunes for particular
MEMS makers, such as STMicroelectronics and TriQuint Semiconductor, both of
whom landed design wins in the iPhone 4 and iPad. TriQuint was propelled into
the No. 8 slot for MEMS chip suppliers worldwide in 2010 on the strength of its
TQM666092 transmit module for the WCDMA band, which uses two MEMS devices—a
bulk acoustic wave (BAW) duplexer and a surface acoustic wave (SAW) interstage
filter. STMicroelectronics, which has multiple MEMS chips in both the iPhone
and iPad, was propelled into the No. 1 position worldwide, with 2010 MEMS
revenues of $354 million.
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