Yole Ranks Top 30 MEMS Suppliers; Sees Rapid Growth in Consumer, Medical
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 1/31/2008 8:30:00 AM
Although automotive applications continue to fuel the MEMS market, the real driver for growth is coming from consumer applications, said Jean Christophe Eloy, CEO of Yole Développement (Lyon, France), a market research firm specializing in MEMS, packaging and related markets.
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| Jean Christophe Eloy, CEO of Yole Développement |
Global top 30 sales are estimated to reach $5.6B, representing ~80% of the global MEMS market, the market research firm reported.
The consumer MEMS business unit of STMicroelectronics (Geneva) was among the companies with >20% growth rate from 2006 to 2007 on the basis of MEMS used in mobile phones and gaming systems, among others. Also growing sharply were Knowles Electronics Inc. (Itasca, Ill.) with its MEMS silicon microphone, and Avago Technologies Inc. with film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) components for the wireless handset market. Nine companies are above $200M in MEMS sales, compared with only four companies two years ago. Analog Devices Inc. (Norwood, Mass.) is a newcomer to the list, boosted by demand for MEMS accelerometer used in consumer applications.
Eloy said, “Only two companies are expected to decline in sales in 2007. Apart from Texas Instruments, Lexmark International Inc. (Lexington, Ky.) is reporting a slight global decrease in 2007. The inkjet head company has not been unveiling new designs for several years, thus giving more room for its competitors.”
The sales of the top 30 companies is growing at a lower rate compared with the overall MEMS industry (7% compared with 9%), signifying what he called “a strong vitality of the small and medium players.”
Jérôme Mouly, a Yole MEMS market analyst in charge of the top 30 report, said that a new entrant to the top 30 is FLIR Systems Inc. (Wilsonville, Ore.), a maker of micro-bolometers used in its thermal imaging systems, which ranked 26th.
“Big changes will happen in 2009-2010 after the M&A wave and when the changes in the manufacturing infrastructure [the move from 150 mm to 200 mm wafers] will impact the profitability of the companies,” Mouly said.
Eloy said the Yole MEMS 2007-2012 market forecast calls for a $14B market value (at the device level) by 2012. That represents a doubling from the 2007 market value of US$7.1B. “For 2008, we expect the market to be US$7.8B. This represents a CAGR of 14% for the 2007-2012 period. The 2007-2010 growth, however, will be quite modest [11%], but a strong growth is expected after 2010. The year 2007 was indeed the time when new MEMS devices are hitting the market: auto-focus, oscillators and dual-axis gyroscopes to name a few.”
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| The value of MEMS production is expected to double over the next five years. |
Yole also forecasted unit growth for the 2007-2012 period. In 2007, two billion MEMS units were produced, growing to 2.5 billion this year. But by 2012, 6.7 billion MEMS devices will be shipped worldwide, according to the forecast.
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| Silicon microphones will replaced inkjet heads as the largest MEMS product in unit terms. |
“An interesting fact is that, despite the large 2007/2008 increase in units for MEMS (25%), the market value growth is ‘only’ 9%. This is from the strong price pressure MEMS devices are currently subject to,” Yole said.
MEMS applications are divided into seven major application fields: automotive, aeronautics, consumer, defense, industrial, medical and life science, and telecom. Automotive application will see modest growth rates of 3.5% over 2007-2012. On the other hand, medical and life science, consumer and (wireless) telecommunications will contribute to growth of the MEMS market after 2010, with growth rates of 18%, 11% and 40%, respectively.
In 2012, consumer applications, including inkjet heads, inertial MEMS, micro displays and emerging MEMS devices such as energy harvesting systems, auto focus, micro zoom, and micro motors, will be more than 40% of the total market in value. “One interesting fact is that a strong growth [21%] for defense is also happening due to the use of high-value inertial MEMS for munitions guidance for instance,” Eloy said.
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| Hewlett Packard sits atop the Top 30 MEMS ranking for 2007. |
The company tracks 150 MEMS applications. RF-MEMS is expected to have the highest growth (50%), followed by microfluidic chips for drug delivery (42%), silicon microphones (32%), microfluidic chips for diagnostics (23%), micro tips and probes (22%), and micro-bolometers (20%).
Eloy said the most promising MEMS devices include accelerometers for human-machine interfaces, with a CAGR exceeding 120% and a market value of $500M in 2012. RF-MEMS for automatic test equipment (ATE, 81%), micro-bolometers for automotive (54%), inhalers (41%), followed by microfluidics for cellular medical R&D (37%) and proteomics analysis (26%), also are expected to surge.
“The presence of three microfluidic devices in the top six MEMS devices with the highest CAGR was quite unexpected, and a good surprise for the medical and life sciences field,” he said.
