Business potential and key challenges to overcome
Motion sensing devices are not new. They have been used since the 50s in the aerospace & defense field for navigation functions. MEMS versions of accelerometers and gyroscopes have only been developed more recently, bringing 2 key advantages: cost and size reduction.
While not as accurate as the devices used for military applications, MEMS type accelerometers and gyroscopes are well adapted to be integrated into cars and many consumer electronic products. MEMS accelerometers have been used since the 90s in light vehicle airbags, as crash sensors.
Other devices have benefited from the use of motion sensors. The latest and most striking examples are their use in Nintendo Wii game controllers and in Apple iPhone and iPod devices.
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MEMS Accelerometers & Gyroscopes
“752M units of MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes were produced worldwide in 2008, corresponding to a 1.80B$ market already”, says Laurent Robin, MEMS Market Analyst at Yole.
“The major part of this market still comes from automotive applications; however consumer applications should overtake this by 2011”, explains Laurent.
This is not only due to the current downturn which is impacting the automotive world: massive use of accelerometer and gyroscope is likely to stay limited to current established applications such as airbag, ESC and TPMS. The annual growth rate will be limited to 3.6 percent up to 2013, compared to 21.1 percent for the consumer area.
Indeed the adoption rate of motion sensors on many consumer electronics products is rising faster than ever.
From the gyroscope side, 3 players dominated the market in 2008: Bosch, Systron Donner and Panasonic had, on average, 20 percent market share 
each.
However the automotive part of Systron Donner shut down in the beginning of 2009, which is greatly impacting the automotive electronics field.
Cost & Intelligence Driving Future Product Generations
Successful MEMS providers will be the ones able to deal with this changing economic landscape.
Some devices now integrate MEMS sensors as a commodity product. In other cases, integration of MEMS is driven by regulation and the user is not willing to pay a price premium for additional sensors. Pressure on cost is thus enormous in the last two cases. Successful players are the ones able to decrease manufacturing costs.
One strategy is to produce on 8” infrastructure. This has been chosen by several players: ST Microelectronics, Bosch Sensortec (Fab is ready but not in use yet), Freescale, TSMC (foundry service)…
Other players have moved to a technology renowned to be more able to handle cost reduction. A nice example is Panasonic which has successfully moved its gyroscope production from quartz to silicon substrates.
When it comes to very high volumes, big IC players are often preferred. Besides been able to sustain high price pressure, they are used to delivering very reliable products, to managing efficiently the supply chain and to ramping up production easily.
Being able to add intelligence to the sensor is also a means to offer strong product differentiators. From supplying only a component, many players are now supplying a solution. Algorithms are commonly integrated at the chip level: for screen rotation, drop detection… This is why a company such as Kionix has been successful in the HDD protection market: notebook free‐fall scenarios have been successfully implemented.
Providing software and system development around the sensor is also essential. It is thus not surprising that in many companies today, more people are working on the software side than on the process side!
For more information visit www.yole.fr