Apr. 18, 2007 — Texas Instruments is the number one MEMS company worldwide (thanks to its DLP chips business); the company established a new record in 2006 with turnover of $905 million, according to German research firm WTC. WTC has just updated its MEMS market data with a global survey of the top 30 MEMS companies. To create the report, WTC interviewed more than 60 organizations during February and March 2007 regarding their current MEMS revenues, products, applications and views of the major changes in the industry.
In addition to the ranking of the top 30 MEMS manufacturers in terms of 2006 MEMS revenue (Hewlett-Packard follows TI), WTC’s report also includes a listing the top 10 MEMS foundry service providers.
“Although other rankings have existed for a couple of years, we did not agree with some of their results”, said Jérémie Bouchaud, head of market research. He noted that worthy companies are missing from those reports, and that MEMS turnover of other companies has been underestimated.
Inkjet print heads still contribute greatly to overall MEMS revenues, with five companies in WTC’s top 10 list: HP, Canon, Lexmark and Seiko with their own print head production and STMicroelectronics as a major foundry partner for HP.
The automotive sector is the next major revenue source. Bosch leads with an overall 4th position with sales of $374 million, followed by nine further companies jostling for position between the 9th place Freescale with $200 million and 16th in the list Honeywell with $122 million. Both gyro and accelerometer sensors for vehicle dynamics (ESP) applications and pressure sensors for TPMS were major stimulants for automotive MEMS markets in 2006.
The mems10 foundries ranking counts a homogeneous group of contract manufacturing companies that specialize or perform most of their foundry business in MEMS. The revenue from MEMS contract manufacturing from the mems10 foundries ranking reached $131 million in 2006. This business expanded by 30% last year.
IMT overtook APM as the leading MEMS foundry, jumping from $13 million to $21 million based on contract manufacturing of infrared sensors, MOEMS and DC switch arrays for telecom applications. Silex’s growth was most dramatic: it doubled revenues to $13 million.