Silicon Microphone is one of the very fast growing applications of the MEMS markets.
The market adoption from mobile phone suppliers has been very swift from 2004 up to the beginning of 2005.
The overall market is forecasted to grow from 60+ Millions units in 2005 to more than 350 in 2008, representing 50% of the mobile phone total available market.
The acquisition of Knowles Electronics by Dover Electronics is also a sign of great interest of the acoustic business which is facing strong changes:
• continuous development of existing applications
• possibilities with the new MEMS devices to evolve from Si microphone to real acoustics modules.
MEMS Microphones are expected to spread over other applications in 2006.
Medical, IT and Automotive area will see penetration of silicon devices among their acoustic modules.
Total MEMS microphone volumes will be boost at 432 millions of units in 2008 according to Yole Développement latest market estimations.This approach is a key enabler for the integration of MEMS devices in mobile phones and related applications.
Competition is also under structuration: other Si Microphone developers like Sonion Mems, Akustica, Memstech, Apogee (and more than 15 other companies worldwide) are increasing their development and industrialization effort to get a big portion of the cake!.
Up to now, 2 companies have released news of industrial product launches (DigiSiMic & the newest SiMic and SiSonic).