Combo inertial sensor market on 19% CAGR, says Yole.
$420 million in 2013, US$585 million in 2014, growing to US$1.4 billion in 2019. This represents 28 percent of the global inertial consumer market in 2014, and will grow to be almost 60 percent by 2019 (see figure 1). It also equates to a compound annual growth rate of 19 percent over the period 2014 to 2019.
Applications in cellphones and tablet computers will drive the market initially but will be replaced by wearable equipment as the main driver of the market, in Yole’s opinion.
Four companies – STMicroelectronics, Bosch Sensortec, InvenSense and Asahi Kasei Microdevices Corp. (AKM) – share 75 percent of the consumer inertial combo sensor market with ST recently losing market share as it lost business with Apple to InvenSense and Bosch, said Yole
In the overall inertial consumer sensor market – discrete and combo – ST is the leader with 40 percent market share. InvenSense has about 12 percent marketshare, going ahead of Bosch, according to Yole.
"The big four, including AKM, are preparing for the future, with InvenSense holding an advantage as it seems to be ahead in the competition on 9-axis sensors, which are found in a large numbers of products in development, including Google Glass," said Guilaume Girardin, a MEMS and sensors analyst at Yole Developpement. "Prices are still dropping sharply, with 6-axis IMUs sold to some large volume customers at less than $1 in 2013," he added.
To stay in competition vendors are introducing technical innovations, including monolithic integrations of 6-axis IMUs within 9-axis components, the use of through-silicon-vias, chip-scale packaging and the use of active die to cap MEMS cavities.
There are challengers eyeing this combo market that expect to take market share even though the supply chain is consolidating. Kionix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rohm Semiconductor, Freescale, Alps Electric, Fairchild and Maxim are amongst those targeting this market, according to Yole.
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