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In 2014, the MEMS sector represented an $11.1B business for Si-based devices. According to Yole Développement (Yole) latest MEMS report “Status of the MEMS Industry”, the MEMS industry is preparing to exceed $20B by 2020.

“We have seen different market leaders in the past and the competition is still very open,” said Jean-Christophe Eloy, President & CEO, Yole. “But 2014 will be remembered for the emergence of what could be a future “MEMS Titan”: Robert Bosch (Bosch),” he added.

Under this new analysis entitled, “Status of the MEMS Industry” report Yole proposes a deep understanding of the MEMS markets trends and players dynamics. The More than Moore market research and strategy consulting company announces its 2014 MEMS manufacturers and foundries ranking and proposes an overview of the future game-changers including new devices, disruptive technologies, 300mm wafers, sensor fusion and new markets.

mems market forecast

Bosch’s MEMS revenues have increased by 20 percent to top $1.2B, driven by consumer sales. STMicroelectronics’ revenue is thus now lagging $400M behind. Compared to 2013, the top five companies remain unchanged and together they earn $3.8B, around a third of the total MEMS business. However, Bosch’s dominance is clear, as its revenues now account for around one-third of that figure. Among the 10 or so MEMS titans that are currently sharing most of the MEMS market, Yole distinguishes the “Titans with Momentum” from the “Struggling Titans”

Titans with Momentum group includes Bosch, InvenSense and others.

“Bosch’s case is particularly noteworthy as it is today the only MEMS company in dual markets – namely automotive and consumer – that has the right R&D/production infrastructure,” said Dr Eric Mounier, Senior Technology & Market Analyst, MEMS devices & Technology at Yole.

STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Knowles, Denso and Panasonic are part of the second group, “Struggling Titans.” These companies are currently struggling to have an efficient value growth engine.

A third family is the upcoming “Baby Titans” like Qorvo and Infineon that have grown significantly in the past couple of years and could become serious MEMS players.

Yole has analyzed the three “Brick Walls” players have to overcome to develop a significant MEMS business. The first is to launch a first MEMS product on the market. The second is moving from one to multiple MEMS product lines to diversify a company’s portfolio. The last is the move from being a device maker to a system maker with a successful MEMS business. So far, only Bosch has achieved a very successful transition.

Yole also announces: “New MEMS devices are emerging.” Under its analysis, the consulting company considers gas and chemical sensors. Such devices are based on semiconductor technologies. But MEMS is a further improvement that can reduce size by half or more and also cut costs, thus opening up new opportunities. According to Yole’s analysis, MEMS-based gas sensors will be increasingly used in applications with formfactor/cost issues, particularly in wearables and then consumer applications such as smartphones.

Another example is MEMS micro mirrors. Yole explains: “They are attracting new interest from the market for optical datacom, with Calient achieving impressive growth, or human-machine interfaces, as demonstrated by Intel’s acquisition of Lemoptix.”

Under its analysis on the MEMS & Sensors industry, Yole and its team took the opportunity to exchange with Jeanne Forget, Global Marketing Director, Bosch Sensortec and Dr Frank Schafer, Senior Manager of product management for automotive micro-electro-mechanical sensors (MEMS) at Robert Bosch on the evolution of the MEMS markets and the ability of Bosch, in the last 20 years and for the next decade, to build and maintain its unique leadership on MEMS industry. Full discussion is available on i-micronews.com, MEMS & Sensors news.

By Douglas G. Sutherland and David W. Price

Author’s Note: This is the sixth in a series of 10 installments that explore fundamental truths about process control—defect inspection and metrology—for the semiconductor industry. Each article in this series introduces one of the 10 fundamental truths and highlights their implications. Within this article we will use the term inspection to imply either defect inspection or a parametric measurement such as film thickness or critical dimension (CD).

In previous installments we discussed capability, sampling, missed excursions, risk management and variability. Although all of these topics involve an element of time, in this paper we will discuss the importance of timeliness in more detail.

The sixth fundamental truth of process control for the semiconductor IC industry is:

Time is the Enemy of Profitability

There are three main phases to semiconductor manufacturing: research and development (R&D), ramp, and high volume manufacturing (HVM). All of them are expensive and time is a critical element in all three phases.

From a cash-flow perspective, R&D is the most difficult phase: the fab is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars every day on man power and capital equipment with no revenue from the newly developed products to offset that expense. In the ramp phase the fab starts to generate some revenue early on, but the yield and volume are still too low to offset the production costs. Furthermore, this revenue doesn’t even begin to offset the cost of R&D. It is usually not until the early stages of HVM that the fab has sufficient wafer starts and sufficient yield to start recovering the costs of the first two phases and begin making a profit. Figure 1 below shows the cumulative cash flow for the entire process.

Figure 1. The cumulative cash-flow as a function of time. In the R&D phase the cash-flow is negative but the slope of the curve turns positive in the ramp phase as revenues begin to build. The total costs do not turn positive until the beginning of high-volume manufacturing.

Figure 1. The cumulative cash-flow as a function of time. In the R&D phase the cash-flow is negative but the slope of the curve turns positive in the ramp phase as revenues begin to build. The total costs do not turn positive until the beginning of high-volume manufacturing.

What makes all of this even more challenging is that all the while, the prices paid for these new devices are falling. The time required from initial design to when the first chips reach the market is a critical parameter in the fab’s profitability. Figure 2 shows the actual decay curve for the average selling price (ASP) of memory chips from inception to maturity.

Figure 2. Typical price decline curve for memory products in the first year after product introduction. Similar trends can be seen for other devices types.

Figure 2. Typical price decline curve for memory products in the first year after product introduction. Similar trends can be seen for other devices types.

Consequently, while the fab is bleeding money on R&D, their ability to recoup those expenses is dwindling as the ASP steadily declines. Anything that can shorten the R&D and ramp phases shortens the time-to-market and allows fabs to realize the higher ASP shown on the left hand side of Figure 2.

From Figures 1 and 2 it is clear that even small delays in completing the R&D or ramp phases can make the difference between a fab that is wildly profitable and one that struggles just to break even. Those organizations that are the first to bring the latest technology to market reap the majority of the reward. This gives them a huge head start—in terms of both time and money—in the development of the next technology node and the whole cycle then repeats itself.

Process control is like a window that allows you to see what is happening at various stages of the manufacturing cycle. Without this, the entire exercise from R&D to HVM would be like trying to build a watch while wearing a blindfold. This analogy is not as far-fetched as it may seem. The features of integrated circuits are far too small to be seen and even when inspections are made, they are usually only done on a small percentage of the total wafers produced. For parametric measurements (films, CD and overlay) measurements are performed only on an infinitesimal percentage of the total transistors on each of the selected wafers. For the vast majority of time, the fab manager truly is blind. Parametric measurements and defect inspection are brief moments when ‘the watch maker’ can take off the blindfold, see the fruits of their labor and make whatever corrections may be required.

As manufacturing processes become more complex with multiple patterning, pitch splitting and other advanced patterning techniques, the risk of not yielding in a timely fashion is higher than ever. Having more process control steps early in the R&D and ramp phases increases the number of windows through which you can see how the process is performing. Investing in the highest quality process control tools improves the quality of these windows. A window that distorts the view—an inspection tool with poor capture rate or a parametric tool with poor accuracy—may be worse than no window at all because it wastes time and may provide misleading data. An effective process control strategy, consisting of the right tools, the right recipes and the right sampling all at the right steps, can significantly reduce the R&D and ramp times.

On a per wafer basis, the amount of process control should be highest in the R&D phase when the yield is near zero and there are more problems to catch and correct. Resolving a single rate-limiting issue in this phase with two fewer cycles of learning—approximately one month—can pay for a significant portion of the total budget spent on process control.

After R&D, the ramp phase is the next most important stage requiring focused attention with very high sampling rates. It’s imperative that the yield be increased to profitable levels as quickly as possible and you can’t do this while blindfolded.

Finally, in the HVM phase an effective process control strategy minimizes risk by discovering yield limiting problems (excursions) in a timely manner.

It’s all about time, as time is money. 

References:

1)     Process Watch: You Can’t Fix What You Can’t Find, Solid State Technology, July 2014

2)     Process Watch: Sampling Matters, Semiconductor Manufacturing and Design, September 2014

3)     Process Watch: The Most Expensive Defect, Solid State Technology, December 2014

4)     Process Watch: Fab Managers Don’t Like Surprises, Solid State Technology, December 2014

5)     Process Watch: Know Your Enemy, Solid State Technology, March 2015 

About the authors:

Dr. David W. Price is a Senior Director at KLA-Tencor Corp. Dr. Douglas Sutherland is a Principal Scientist at KLA-Tencor Corp. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Price and Dr. Sutherland have worked directly with over 50 semiconductor IC manufacturers to help them optimize their overall inspection strategy to achieve the lowest total cost. This series of articles attempts to summarize some of the universal lessons they have observed through these engagements.

 

By Zvi Or-Bach, President and CEO of MonolithIC 3D Inc.

Scaling is now bifurcating – some scaling on with 28/22nm, while other push below 14nm.

In his famous 1965 paper Cramming more components onto integrated circuits, Moore wrote: “The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year”. Dimensional scaling below 28nm will only increase the ‘component cost’ as we described in Moore’s Law has stopped at 28nm and is detailed in the following tables published recently by IBS.

Fig 1

 

While there is still a strong effort behind dimensional scaling to 14, 10 and 7nm – and possibly even beyond, a new scaling effort is emerging to reduce the ‘component costs’ and increase integration yet still utilize the 28 nm process node. The semiconductor industry is now going through a bifurcation phase.

This new emerging trend of scaling by factors other than dimensional scaling was recognized early-on by Gordon Moore and was detailed in his 1975 famous IEDM paper “Progress in digital integrated electronics.”. In that paper Moore updated the time scaling rate to every two years and suggested the following factors are helping to drive scaling forward:

  1.  “Die size” – “larger chip area”
  2. “Dimension” – “higher density” and “finer geometries”
  3. “Device and circuit cleverness”

A fourth factor should have been added to the list above – improvement in manufacturing efficiency, which ensued from the increase in wafer sizes from 4” to 5” and all the way to the 12” of today, and many other manufacturing improvements.

In the past, all of these factors were aggregated into dimensional scaling as old fabs got obsolete and improvements were implemented predominantly in the new emerging node. Nowadays, as dimensional scaling has reached its diminishing returns phase, we can see a very diverse adaption of technology improvments.

In his keynote presentation at the 2014 Synopsys user group meeting, Art De Geus, Synopsys CEO, presented multiple slides to illustrate the value of Synopsys’ newer tools to improve older node design effectiveness. The following is one of them:

Fig 2

AMD’s recent presentation at ISSCC 2015 clearly illustrates this point by showing device improvements while still staying at the same 28 nm process node, see slide below. As could be seen, major improvements in power, yield, and performance are possible over time without changing the technology node. AMD’s President & CEO Dr. Lisa Su presentation in 2015 Semicon China, reiterated AMD’s technology progress within the same 28nm technology node:

Fig 3

Even more significant would be the adoption of a breakthrough technology. A good example is the SRAM technology developed by Zeno Semiconductor, which has recently been validated on a 28nm process. This new SRAM technology replaces the 6T SRAM bit cell with 1T SRAM (true SRAM – no refresh is needed) providing significant reduction of ‘component costs’ as is illustrated in the following two slides.

Fig 4

Fig 5

This new industry trend was nicely articulated by Kelvin Low of Samsung covered in “Samsung Describes Road to 14nm, FinFETs a challenge, FD-SOI an alternative.” Quoting: “Samsung spent several years developing its 14nm technology and debating which process node it would invest in after 28nm. Low expects that 28nm will still be a popular process node for years to come because of its price …The cost per transistor has increased in 14nm FinFETs and will continue to do so, Low said, so an alternative technology such as 28nm SOI is necessary”. TSMC too is now spending on new R&D efforts to improve their 28 nm as was presented in TSMC 2015 Technology Symposium, introducing new 28nm processes, 28HPC+ and 28ULP. 28HPC+ is for high performance, a speed gain of about 15% for the same leakage, or a reduction of 30-50% in leakage for the same speed. The 28ULP (for ultra-low power) process is for IoT applications with a lower operating voltage of 0.7V (versus 0.9V for 28HPC+). And also new standard cell libraries were developed for this process with 9 and 7 track libraries (compared to 12T/9T before).

“Device and circuit cleverness” as a factor will never stop; however, it is made of a series of individual improvements that will not be enough to sustain a long-term scaling path for the industry. An alternative long-term path will be “Die size” – “larger chip area,” which is effectively monolithic 3D, and manufacturing efficiency, which will have an important role in monolithic 3D.

And who is better to call it than Mark Bohr of Intel? In a recent blog piece “Intel predicts Moore’s Law to last another 10 years” Bohr is quoted predicting “that Moore’s Law will not come to an abrupt halt, but will morph and evolve and go in a different direction, such as scaling density by the 3D stacking of components rather than continuing to reduce transistor size.”

And this is also visible in the marketplace by the industry-wide adoption of 3D NAND devices that Samsung started to mass-produce in 2014, and followed with a second generation 32 layer-stack device this year, and forecasting going to ~ 100 layers, as illustrated in their slide:

Fig 6

 

In the recent webcast “Monolithic 3D: The Most Effective Path for Future IC Scaling,” Dr. Maud Vinet of CEA Leti presented their “CoolCube” monolithic 3D technology, which was followed by our own, i.e., MonolithIC 3D, presentation. An important breakthrough presented by us was a monolithic 3D process flow that does not require changes in transistor-formation process and could be easily integrated by any fab at any process node.

Finally, I’d like to quote Mark Bohr again as we reported in our blog “Intel Calls for 3D IC”: “heterogeneous integration enabled by 3D IC is an increasingly important part of scaling” as was presented in ISSCC 2015.

Fig 7

 

This is illustrated nicely by the following figure presented by Qualcomm in their ISPD ‘15 paper titled “3D VLSI: A Scalable Integration Beyond 2D.”

Fig 8

 

In summary, the general promise of Moore’s Law is not going to end any time soon. Yet it is not going to be the simple brute-force x0.7 dimensional scaling that dominated the industry for the last 5 decades. Quoting Mark Bohr again, it “will morph and evolve and go in a different direction, such as scaling density by the 3D stacking of components rather than continuing to reduce transistor size.”

P.S. –

A good conference to learn about these new scaling technologies is the IEEE S3S ‘15, in Sonoma, CA, on October 5th thru 8th, 2015. CEA Leti is scheduled to give an update on their CoolCube program and three leading researchers from Berkeley, Stanford and Taiwan’s NLA Lab will present their work on advanced monolithic 3D integration technologies.

Stiff competition in sensors for high-volume design wins and a recovery in actuator growth shuffled the ranking of suppliers in the $9.2 billion market for sensors and actuators in 2014, according to IC Insights’ new 2015 O-S-D Report—A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discretes. The new O-S-D Report says the overall trend in sensors and actuators is for the largest suppliers to keep getting bigger, gaining marketshare because more high-volume applications—such as smartphones and the huge potential of the Internet of Things (IoT)—and automotive systems require well-established track records for quality, long-term reliability, and on-time delivery of semiconductors.

Sensor leader Robert Bosch in Germany extended its lead in this market with a 16 percent sales increase in 2014 to nearly $1.2 billion. The German company became the first sensor maker to reach $1.0 billion in 2013 when its sales climbed 29 percent, reflecting continued strong growth in its automotive base and expansion into high-volume consumer and mobile applications. Bosch’s marketshare in sensor-only sales grew to 20 percent in 2014 from 18 percent in 2013 and 15 percent in 2012, according to the 10th edition of IC Insights’ annual O-S-D Report.

Meanwhile, STMicroelectronics saw its sensor/actuator sales volume fall 19 percent in 2014 to $630 million, which caused it to drop to fourth place among the market’s top suppliers from second in 2013. ST’s drop was partly caused by marketshare gains by Bosch and U.S.-based InvenSense, which climbed from 14th in 2013 to ninth in the 2014 sensor/actuator ranking with a 33 percent increase in sensor sales to $332 million last year. Bosch and InvenSense sensors—which are made with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology—have knocked ST’s MEMS-based sensors from a number of high-volume smartphones, including Apple’s newest iPhone handsets.

ST’s drop in sensor revenues and modest sales increases in MEMS-based actuators at Texas Instruments (micro-mirror devices for digital projectors and displays) and Hewlett-Packard (mostly inkjet-printer nozzle devices) moved TI and HP up one position in IC Insights’ 2014 ranking to second and third place, respectively (as shown in Figure 1). Infineon remained in fifth place in the sensors/actuator ranking with an 8 percent sales increase to $520 million last year. The 2015 O-S-D Report provides top 10 rankings of suppliers in sensors/actuators, optoelectronics, and discrete semiconductors in addition to a top 30 O-S-D list of companies, based on combined revenue in optoelectronics, sensors/actuators and discretes.

Figure 1

Figure 1

The new O-S-D Report forecasts worldwide sensor sales to increase 7 percent in 2015 to reach a record-high $6.1 billion after growing 5 percent in 2014 to $5.7 billion and rising just 3 percent in 2013.  Total actuator sales are expected to increase 7 percent in 2015 to $3.7 billion, which will tie the record high set in 2011. Actuator sales fell 10 percent in 2012 and dropped another 4 percent in 2013 before recovering in 2014 with a 7 percent increase to $3.5 billion.  MEMS technology was used in about 34 percent of the 11.1 billion sensors shipped in 2014 and essentially all of the 999 million actuators sold last year, based on an analysis in the new O-S-D Report.  Tiny MEMS structures are used in these devices to perform transducer functions (i.e., detecting and measuring changes around sensors for inputs in electronic systems, and initiating physical actions in actuators from electronic signals).

By Paula Doe, SEMI

In this 50th year anniversary of Moore’s Law, the steady scaling of silicon chips’ cost and performance that has so changed our world over the last half century is now poised to change it even further through the Internet of Things, in ways we can’t yet imagine, suggests Intel VP of IoT Doug Davis, who will give the keynote at SEMICON West (July 14-16) this year.  Powerful sensors, processors, and communications now make it possible to bring more intelligent analysis of the greater context to many industrial decisions for potentially significant returns, which will drive the first round of serious adoption of the IoT. But there is also huge potential for adding microprocessor intelligence to all sorts of everyday objects and connecting them with outside information, to solve all sorts of real problems, from saving energy to saving babies’ lives. “We see a big impact on the chip industry,” says Davis, noting the needs to deal with highly fragmented markets, as well to reduce power, improve connectivity, and find ways to assure security.

The end of the era of custom embedded designs?

The IoT may mean the end of the era of embedded chips, argues Paul Brody, IBM’s former VP of IoT, who moves to a new job this month, one of the speakers in the SEMICON West TechXPOT program on the impact of the IoT on the semiconductor sector.  Originally, custom embedded solutions offered the potential to design just the desired features, at some higher engineering cost, to reduce the total cost of the device as much as possible. Now, however, high volumes of mobile gear and open Android systems have brought the cost of a loaded system on a chip with a dual core processor, a gigabit of DRAM and GPS down to only $10.  “The SoC will become so cheap that people won’t do custom anymore,” says Brody. “They’ll just put an SoC in every doorknob and window frame.  The custom engineering will increasingly be in the software.”

Security of all these connected devices will require re-thinking as well, since securing all the endpoints, down to every light bulb, is essentially impossible, and supposedly trusted parties have turned out not to be so trustworthy after all. “With these SoCs everywhere, the cost of distributed compute power will become zero,” he argues, noting that will drive systems towards more distributed processing.  One option for security then could be a block chain system like that used by Bit Coin, which allows coordination with no central control, and when not all the players are trustworthy. Instead of central coordination, each message is broadcast to all nodes, and approved by the vote of the majority, requiring only that the majority of the points be trustworthy.

While much of the high volume IoT demand may be for relatively standard, low cost chips, the high value opportunity for chip makers may increasingly be in design and engineering services for the expanding universe of customers. “Past waves of growth were driven by computer companies, but as computing goes into everything this time, it will be makers of things like Viking ranges and Herman Miller office furniture who will driving the applications, who will need much more help from their suppliers,” he suggests.

Intel Graphics

Source: Intel, 2015

Adding context to the data from the tool

The semiconductor industry has long been a leader in connecting things in the factory, from early M2M for remote access for service management and improving overall equipment effectiveness, to the increased automation and software management of 300mm manufacturing, points out Jeremy Read, Applied Materials VP of Manufacturing Services, who’ll be speaking in another SEMICON West 2015 program on how the semiconductor sector will use the IoT. But even in today’s highly connected fabs, the connections so far are still limited to linking individual elements for dedicated applications specifically targeting a single end, such as process control, yield improvement, scheduling or dispatching.  These applications, perhaps best described as intermediate between M2M and IoT, have provided huge value, and have seen enormous growth in complexity. “We have seen fabs holding 50 TB of data at the 45nm node, increasing to 140 TB in 20nm manufacturing,” he notes.

Now the full IoT vision is to converge this operational technology (OT) of connected things in the factory with the global enterprise (IT) network, to allow new ways to monitor, search and manage these elements to provide as yet unachievable levels of manufacturing performance. “However, we’ve learned that just throwing powerful computational resources at terabytes of unstructured data is not effective – we need to understand the shared CONTEXT of the tools, the process physics, and the device/design intent to arrive at meaningful and actionable knowledge,” says Read.  He notes that for the next step towards an “Internet-of-semiconductor-manufacturing-things” we will need to develop the means to apply new analytical and optimizing applications to both the data and its full manufacturing context, to achieve truly new kinds of understanding.

With comprehensive data and complete context information it will become possible to transform the service capability in a truly radical fashion – customer engineers can use the power of cloud computation and massive data management to arrive at insights into the precise condition of tools, potentially including the ability to predict failures or changes in processing capability. “This does require customers to allow service providers to come fully equipped into the fab – not locking out all use of such capabilities,” he says. “If we are to realize the full potential of these opportunities, we must first meet these challenges of security and IP protection.”

Besides these programs on the realistic impact of the IoT on the semiconductor manufacturing technology sector, SEMICON West 2015, July 14-16 in San Francisco, will also feature related programs on what’s coming next across MEMS, digital health, embedded nonvolatile memory, flexible/hybrid systems, and connected/autonomous cars.  

April 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the business world’’s most profound drivers, now commonly referred to as Moore’s Law.  In April 1965, Gordon Moore, later co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits would continue to double every year.  This “observation” has set the exponential tempo for five decades of innovation and investment resulting in today’s $336 billion USD integrated circuits industry enabled by the $82 billion USD semiconductor equipment and materials industry (SEMI and SIA 2014 annual totals).

SEMI, the global industry association serving the nano- and micro-electronic manufacturing supply chains, today recognizes the enabling contributions made by the over 1,900 SEMI Member companies in developing semiconductor equipment and materials that produce over 219 billion integrated circuit devices and 766 billion semiconductor units per year (WSTS, 2014).

50 years of Moore’’s Law has led to one of the most technically sophisticated, constantly evolving manufacturing industries operating today.  Every day, integrated circuit (IC) production now does what was unthinkable 50 years ago.  SEMI Member companies now routinely produce materials such as process gases, for example, to levels of 99.994 percent quality for bulk Silane (SiH4) in compliance with the SEMI C3.55 Standard.  Semiconductor equipment manufacturers develop the hundreds of processing machines necessary for each IC factory (fab) that are at work all day, every day, processing more than 100 silicon wafers per hour with fully automated delivery and control – all with standardized interoperability. SEMI Member companies provide the equipment to inspect wafer process results automatically, and find and identify defects at sizes only fractions of the 14nm circuit line elements in today’s chips, ensuring process integrity throughout the manufacturing process.

“”It was SEMI Member companies who enabled Moore’’s Law’’s incredible exponential growth over the last 50 years,”” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI.  “”Whereas hundreds of transistors on an IC was noteworthy in the 1960s, today over 1.3 billion transistors are on a single IC.  SEMI Member companies provide the capital equipment and materials for today’s mega-fabs, with each one processing hundreds or thousands of ICs on each wafer with more than 100,000 wafers processed per month.””

To celebrate SEMI Member companies’ contribution to the 50 years of Moore’s Law, SEMI has produced a series of Infographics that show the progression of the industry.

1971

2015

Price per chip

$351

$393

Price per 1,000 transistors

$150

$0.0003

Number of transistors per chip

2,300

1,300,000,000

Minimum feature size on chip

10,000nm

14nm

From SEMI infographic “Why Moore Matters”: www.semi.org/node/55026

Sensor shipments are getting a big boost from the spread of embedded measurement functions for automated intelligent controls in systems and new high-volume applications—such as wearable electronics and the huge potential of the Internet of Things (IoT)—but sales growth is being pulled down significantly by price erosion in this once high-flying semiconductor marketplace, according to IC Insights’ new 2015 O-S-D Report—A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discretes.

Average selling prices (ASPs) for all types of semiconductor sensors are forecast to fall by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -5 percent in the next five years, which is double the rate of decline in the previous five years (2009-2014), says the new IC Insights report. Unit volume growth is expected to climb by a strong CAGR of 11.4 percent in the 2014-2019 timeframe and reach 19.1 billion sensor shipments worldwide in five years and revenue growth is projected to rise by an annual rate of 6.0 percent in the forecast period. In comparison, sensor sales grew by a CAGR of 17.1 percent between 2009 and 2014 to reach a new record high of $5.7 billion last year, according to analysis found in the 360-page annual O-S-D Report, which also covers actuators, optoelectronics, and discrete semiconductors.

ASP erosion is partly a result of intense competition among a growing number of sensor suppliers pursuing new portable, consumer, and IoT applications. Sensor ASPs are also being driven much lower because many new high-volume applications require rock-bottom prices. The fall in prices is not only undermining revenue growth in the highly competitive sensor segment, but it is also now squeezing profit margins among suppliers.

Semiconductor sensors make up nearly two-thirds of the total sensor/actuator market segment, according to the 2015 O-S-D Report. As shown in Figure 1, acceleration/yaw sensors (i.e., accelerometers and gyroscope devices) remained the largest sensor category, in terms of dollar sales volume, accounting for 26 percent of the total sensor/actuator market. The acceleration/yaw sensor category continued to struggle due to price erosion and a significant deceleration in unit growth to just 1 percent in 2014, which resulted in a 4 percent drop in worldwide sales to $2.4 billion after falling 2 percent in 2013. Magnetic-field sensors (including electronic compass chips) rebounded in 2014 with an 11 percent increase in sales to set a new record high of about $1.6 billion after slumping 1 percent in 2013. Pressure sensor sales remained strong in 2014, growing 15 percent to a new record-high $1.5 billion after climbing 16 percent in 2013.

sensor shipments

Figure 1

 

The forecast in the O-S-D Report shows total sensor sales growing 7 percent in 2015 to $6.1 billion after rising just 5 percent in 2014. Sensor shipments are projected to climb 16 percent in 2015 to 12.9 billion units after a 13 percent increase in 2014.

About 80 percent of the sensors/actuators market’s sales in 2014 came from semiconductors built with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology—primarily pressure and acceleration/yaw sensors and actuator devices.  MEMS-based product sales grew about 5 percent to a record-high $7.4 billion in 2014 from $7.0 billion in 2013.  Sensors accounted for 53 percent of MEMS-based semiconductor sales in 2014 ($3.9 billion) while 46 percent of the total ($3.5 billion) came from actuators, such as micro-mirrors for displays and digital projectors, microfluidic devices for inkjet printer nozzles and other application, radio frequency (RF) MEMS filters, and timekeeping silicon oscillators.

In terms of unit volumes, sensors represented 80 percent of the 5.1 billion MEMS-based semiconductors shipped in 2014 (4.1 billion) with the remaining 20 percent being actuators (about 1.0 billion).

After dropping slightly more than 1 percent in 2012 and being flat in 2013, sales of MEMS-based semiconductors recovered in 2014 with actuators ending a two-year decline, rising 7 percent, and pressure sensors continuing double-digit growth with a 15 percent increase in the year.  Sales of MEMS-based sensors and actuators are forecast to grow 7 percent in 2015 to $7.9 billion and reach $9.8 billion in 2019, representing a CAGR of 12.0 percent from 2014.

The market for MEMS has been growing at a fast rate.  Gyroscopes and accelerometers will account for a significant amount of the MEMS revenues.  But growth will come as a result of a wide variety of emerging MEMS and will be driven by the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), where MEMS devices will replace conventional sensors, and by the introduction of new sensor technologies.  The new Semico Research report “MEMS Market Update: The New Driving Forces” projects that MEMS shipments will reach 43.3 billion units by 2018.

“Going forward, industrial and home automation are the new drivers for MEMS innovation as more devices with new sensing technologies are connected to the IoT,” says Tony Massimini, Semico Research’s Chief of Technology. “MEMS are growing in part as they replace conventional non-MEMS sensors in automotive and industrial applications. Accelerometers and microphones will account for the bulk of these shipments.  Magnetometers, gyroscopes, pressure sensors, and actuators will also have significant volumes.”

Key findings of the report include:

  • Sales of MEMS devices exceeded $14.3 billion in 2014.
  • MEMS unit shipments grew 36.6 percent annually in 2014.
  • From 2013 to 2018, Semico projects a CAGR of 28.4 percent for MEMS units.
  • By 2018, industrial will be the second largest market reaching $5.3 billion.

In its recent report “MEMS Market Update: The New Driving Forces” (MP109-15), Semico Research presents the MEMS market and forecasts by the device type and  by key end use markets.  Readers will see which MEMS are growing fastest and in which market segments.

The report also discusses the latest trends in Sensor Fusion, the use of MEMS and sensors in IoT, and collaboration among companies and organizations involved with MEMS and sensors.  The report is 52 pages long and includes 26 tables and 27 figures.

With an impressive 20 percent growth in MEMS revenue compared to 2013, and sales revenues of more than $1.2B, Robert Bosch GmbH is the clear #1.

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From Yole Développement’s yearly analysis of “TOP 100 MEMS Players,” analysts have released the “2014 TOP 20 MEMS Players Ranking.” This ranking shows the clear emergence of what could be a future “MEMS titan”: Robert Bosch (Bosch). Driven by MEMS for smartphone sales – including pressure sensors -, Bosch’s MEMS revenue increased by 20 percent in 2014, and totaling $1.2B. The gap between Bosch and STMicroelectronics now stands at more than $400M

“The top five remains unchanged from 2013, but Bosch now accounts for one-third of the $3.8B MEMS revenue shared by the top five MEMS companies. Together, these five companies account for around one- third of the total MEMS business,” details Jean-Christophe Eloy, President & CEO, Yole Développement (Yole). “It’s also interesting to see that among the top thirty players, almost every one increased its revenue in 2014,” he adds.

In other noteworthy news, Texas Instruments’ sales saw a slight increase thanks to its DLP projection business. RF companies also enjoyed impressive growth, with a 23 percent increase for Avago Technologies (close to $400M) and a 141 percent increase for Qorvo (formerly TriQuint), to $350M.

Meanwhile, the inertial market keeps growing. This growth is beneficial to InvenSense, which continues its rise with a 32 percent increase in 2014, up to $329M revenue. Accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers are not the only devices contributing to MEMS companies’ growth. Pressure sensors also made a nice contribution, especially in automotive and consumer sectors. Specifically, Freescale Semiconductor saw a 33 percent increase in pressure revenue, driven by the Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) business for automotive. On the down side, ink jet head companies still face hard times, with Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Canon both seeing revenues decrease. However, new markets are being targeted. Though thus far limited to consumer printers, MEMS technology is set to expand into the office and industrial markets as a substitute for laser printing technology (office) and inkjet piezo machining technology (for industrial & graphics).

“What we see is an industry that will generally evolve in four stages over the next 25 years. This is true for both CMOS Image Sensors and MEMS,” explains Dr Eric Mounier, Senior Technology & Market Analyst, MEMS devices & Technologies at Yole. He explains: “The “opening stage” generally begins when the top three companies hold no more than 10 – 30 percent market share. Later on, the industry enters the “scale stage” through consolidation, when the top three increases its collective market share to 45 percent.”

According to Yole, the “More than Moore” market research and strategy consulting company, MEMS industry has now entered the “Expansion Stage.”

“Key players are expanding, and we’re starting to see some companies surpassing others (i.e. Bosch’s rise to the top). If we follow this model, the next step will be the “Balance & Alliance” stage, characterized by the top three holding up to 90 percent of market share”, comments Dr Mounier.

Among the 10 or so MEMS titans currently sharing most of the MEMS markets, Yole’s analysts have separated them into two categories:

  • “Titans with Momentum” and “Struggling Titans”. In the first category we include Bosch, InvenSense, Avago Technologies and Qorvo. Bosch’s case is particularly noteworthy, since it’s currently the only MEMS company with dual markets (automotive and consumer) and the right R&D/production infrastructure.
  • On the “Struggling Titans” side, Yole identifies STMicroelectronics, HP, Texas Instruments, Canon, Knowles, Denso and Panasonic. These companies are currently struggling to find an efficient growth engine.

 

Without question, both Bosch and InvenSense are growing, while others like STMicroelectronics and Knowles are suffering a slow-down or MEMS sales decrease.

Another interesting fact about Yole’s 2014 TOP MEMS Ranking is that there are no new entrants (and thus no exits).

More market figures and analysis on MEMS, the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearables can be found in Yole’s 2014 IoT report (Technologies & Sensors for Internet of Things: Business & Market Trends, June 2014), and the upcoming “Sensors for Wearables and Mobile” report.

Also, Yole is currently preparing the 2015 release of its “MEMS Industry Status.” This will be issued in April and will delve deeper into MEMS markets, strategies and players analyses.

Samsung, Apple and Chinese OEMs will drive revenue in the light sensor market to grow 16 percent between 2013 and 2016, according to a new report released today from IHS Inc., a global source of critical information and insight.

The latest MEMS & Sensors report from IHS, Shining a Light on a Colourful Market, found that revenues will reach $767 million in 2016, a 16 percent rise in three years (2013 to 2016).

“Between 2013 and 2015, there has been a rapid adoption of light sensor units, mostly thanks to Samsung,” said Marwan Boustany, senior analyst for MEMS and Sensors at IHS Technology. “Samsung has led the mass adoption of RGB sensors, gesture sensors, optical pulse sensors and even UV sensors in this timeframe.”

Apple and Samsung lead the pack, but Chinese firms are on their heels

In 2014, Samsung accounted for 43 percent of light sensor spending in handsets. The company spent $271.8 million on light sensors in 2014, with a sizeable portion of this coming from the apathetically received pulse sensor.

Apple is the second largest buyer of light sensors after Samsung and spent $129.5 million in 2014. Apple accounted for 19 percent of light sensor spending in handsets in 2014 because Apple uses custom and high performance parts. IHS forecasts that by 2017, Apple will adopt a 3-in-1 package because solutions that offer both the size and performance it seeks should be available by this time.

Chinese Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) represented 23 percent of light sensor spending in 2014, mostly on standard low cost components and a small percentage of high cost, high performance parts.

“The Chinese market remains a place where anything and everything can be tried as companies try to find any and every means to differentiate or at least match flagships from Samsung and Apple,” Boustany said. “Chinese OEMs are also characterized by preferring to have several suppliers for their sensors, ranging from three to six or more suppliers. The Chinese market is very competitive with price being the key element for most OEMs.”

Top sensor suppliers and new champions

Ams claimed the top spot in terms of revenue and units thanks to its range of customers and its key design wins with Samsung flagships and its spread across Apple products. Ams shipped 744 million sensors in 2014.

Maxim followed in second place. “Maxim managed to be a top performer in the consumer light sensor market, with 132 million light sensors shipped in 2014, with the majority of these being optical pulse sensors going into Samsung’s flagship devices.

The important news in 2014 is the rapid rise of companies like Sitronix, Elan and Everlight. “Sitronix has been successful at being a second or third source to a range of top tier companies, which means it can grow safely and rapidly,” Boustany said. “In 2014, it achieved about $25 million for a 69 percent revenue growth.”

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