In 2005, Yole Développement released its first report on the analysis of the MEMS applications for the mobile phone industry.
Since our first analysis, a lot of things happened on the market MEMS devices for mobile phones include:
• Silicon microphone: now at least 2 companies have devices available (Knowles Acoustics and SonionMEMS).
The market has reached more than 95 M.
units in 2005, 15% higher than our expectations
• 3D accelerometers: for this application also, the market has increased very rapidly with the new use of the inertial sensors, especially on the Japanese market (for GPS positioning) and in Korea (active logo)
• 6 DOF IMU: we see more and more interest from handset manufacturers to have an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for high end mobile phone
• Gyroscope for camera stabilisation and GPS: still under development, as predicted, for a product introduction in 2007 at the earliest
• Microfuel cell: product introduction announcements in 2007 have been made by several Japanese companies.
This was in line with our last year estimation.
Volume business should start in 2008.
MEMS will be a key technology for the fuel cell but also for several other key devices, like microvalves or gaz detectors
• Chemical and Biochip: personal weather station and health care monitor
• RF MEMS: still only one type of product on the market (FBAR from Agilent, Infineon and other companies) with very strong growth of the unit sold… but very strong decrease of the price.
Other device announced is the replacement of quartz oscillator by MEMS based oscillator, starting end of 2006
• Enhanced auto focus and micro zoom: now several companies are proposing MEMS based devices, including Varioptic which is the only company close to production; a spin off from Philips named Laquavista has just been created in order to industrialize the electro-wetting technologies from Philips for displays.Announced since years, MEMS devices are entering step by step into the mobile phone business and they are key devices to leverage these new functions (figure 1).
Linked to that, the main industrial companies are now entering the MEMS fields to take part in this growing business.
According to our new estimation, the market will reach 750 M$ in 2009.Compared to our last estimation, the market in units is growing much faster than we expected but on the same time, the market in value is lower than expected: we think now that the 2008 market will be in the range of 550 M$ (compared to our last year estimation of 620 M$).The price pressure in this industry is just incredible.Despite analysis done by several other market research firms, Yole Développement does not see a product introduction for RF active devices before 2008.
The technology is still immature: only 2 companies are producing RF switches in volume today (Teravicta and Matsushita Electric Works), for the ATE markets, so mainly high end applications.
The devices available have a very low price...