New Virtuous Cycle for the MEMS Industry

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The MEMS Market is observing a strong paradox today

Increasing volumes driven by the consumer wave (more and more smartphones sold and more and more sensors integrated in smartphone) leading to sensor die size reduction to answer the strong price pressure dictated by the consumer market. But this affect sensors margins, which shrink if the process is not re-tuned to gain on margin again. Overall resulting in a stable or declining market in terms of value.

Thus is the MEMS industry digging its own grave with this commoditization paradox? How to exit from this scenario?

Well, one might take a step back and look at what the CMOS Image sensor industry has achieved. Driven by the self-love or narcissism of human kind, the front cameras of our smartphones have increased in resolution for us to achieve better quality images of “selfies”: Hence the front camera resolution has been increased by a factor 4 in 4 years, thanks to increased number of pixels and thus sensor die size, leading inevitably to higher sensor prices.

What can we learn from this story and apply to the MEMS industry to gain value?

More complexity at system level: drive for better accuracy/precise tracking and features, meaning:

•  Sensor fusion
•  More integration: Pressure + microphone for example
•  Improved environment tracking: particles and gas sensing

MEMS markets challenges are thus evolving

Power consumption is becoming a major trend while mobiles, tablets, wearables have to survive for long periods on battery while interacting with the environment (voice calls, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS , sensors …).

Sensor fusion, software and added features are the current battleground of the hubs integration path.

Finally the user case is definitely mandatory! The idea is to start with applications, and work downwards to the chips needed to support them. This will be easier for a system maker than a pure sensor player who is further away on the supply chain and thus further away from his final end user needs.

In brief a new virtuous cycle is needed for the MEMS industry to gain value and stop being limited by shrinking prices and margins.

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