Big four capture a third of the total MEMS market, accounting for some $2.9 billion of the sector's $8.6 billion in total sales.

Lyon, France – The MEMS industry had a great 25 percent growth year in 2010 – but the four largest companies grew even faster, to increase their domination of Yole Développement's annual Top 30 MEMS companies ranking, and of the sector as a whole. These giants now account for some $2.9 billion of the sector's $8.6 billion in total sales.

MEMS may still be an industry with a multitude of diverse products, but it’s also increasingly an industry dominated by a limited number of big suppliers.

Blockbuster recovery and inventory restocking from the automotive sector, and the rush to put inertial sensors in every handheld device, drove a healthy 25 percent jump in total MEMS sales in 2010, to some $8.6 billion. But it particularly meant a boom year for high volume MEMS suppliers to big customers.

The big four –Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, Robert Bosch and STMicroelectronics—increased their combined MEMS sales by some 37 percent, to ~$2.9 billion, as they aggressively ramped volumes and shrank die size to drive down costs, and widened the gap with their smaller challengers.

Sales of the big four now account for about one third of total MEMS industry revenues.

“It’s very important to be big to succeed in the consumer and automotive markets,” says Jean Christophe Eloy, CEO of Yole Developpement.

“A company needs to have size big enough to ramp volume on 8-inch wafers to reduce costs, and to continue to invest in shrinking the die to drive ASP down. Companies with smaller size will remain flat or will get pushed out. We now see clearly three groups of MEMS companies, those with sales above $500M (the leaders, involved in consumer electronics and/or automotive businesses), those with sales between $500M and $200M ( the companies that still can become global leaders in MEMS) and those below $200M (companies that have to specialize in specific businesses in order to be profitable)”

There’s plenty of industry-leading growth among the rest of the Top 30 companies as well. This year it took sales of $52 million to make the ranking, up from only $31 million last year.

Five additional players reached $100 million or more in MEMS sales, bringing 21 of the 30 to a level likely needed to stay competitive in the consumer or automotive business. The Top 30 companies now account for about 80 percent of total MEMS industry sales.

Yole Développement defines MEMS for this listing as three-dimensional structures made by semiconductor processes, with primarily physical or mechanical, not function. This year we also included magnetic sensors because they are becoming so closely integrated with MEMS inertial sensors.

Yole Développement’s 8 MEMS analysts base this annual listing both on direct discussions with the companies in their particular fields as they track some 150-200 MEMS companies throughout the year, and also cross checked with their bottom-up analysis of MEMS device markets.

For more information visit www.yole.fr.