Yole Développement has edited the 2006 up to date version of the report “Status of the MEMS industry” describing the evolution of the MEMS industry, the business models, its possible evolutions… The latest YOLE forecasts were indicating that MEMS markets will grow from $ 5.1B to $ 9.7B, representing an annual growth rate close to 15%.
Due to the strong growth of the consumer applications, especially in the mobile phone industry, the growth rate is lower than the previous years in term of revenue; the unit growth will be much higher, close to 20%.Due to these changes from industrial to consumer applications, companies are changing their strategy.
More and more semiconductor companies are involved in MEMS manufacturing (all the TOP 50 semiconductor companies are involved in MEMS manufacturing or development), new strategies are emerging with product introduction targeting module approach instead of sensor delivery in order to provide more added value and avoid price erosion.For the first time, Yole Développement is analysing the 20 most innovative companies and start-up involved in MEMS design and manufacturing, providing trends for the future growth of MEMS markets and analysing business links.Quartz oscillators could be replace in a large part by MEMS based oscillator (industrialisation at SiTime, Silicon Clocks, Discera and VTI Technologies).
Microphone business is completely reorganised by the introduction of Silicon Microphone (Knowles Acoustics, SonionMEMS, Akustica, Memstech …).
Inertial sensing is jumping in the consumer applications with strong impact on piezo-ceramic based devices (Bosch, Invensense, Panasonic …).
Camera modules will host MEMS based auto focus, micro zoom and image stabilization (Siimple, Varioptic, Rhevision, Samsung Techwin …) …