Feb 10 2014
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global 6 and 9 Axis Sensors Market to 2018" report to their offering.
STMicroelectronics is the global leader in the inertial consumer sensor market with 42% market share. Only InvenSense and Bosch Sensortec are able to compete with it today. It is key to be able to control the different technologies or to establish the right partnerships to sell a large range of combo solutions. ST is just starting to sell its own magnetometer in 2013, while Bosch has been very active in launching new product lines since 2012. InvenSense has just partnered with Melexis as an alternative source to AKM for the magnetometer die in 9-axis solutions, although this is not official information.
Price is still sharply dropping, with IMUs sold to some large volume customers below $1 in 2013. To stay in the race, the 3 leaders are going to introduce technical innovations: monolithic integration of 6 to 9-axis, use of TSV, chip scale packaging, and active capping.
Current challengers and newcomers are eyeing this combo opportunity and expect to take market share while the supply chain is not yet mature. Kionix, Freescale, Alps Electric, Fairchild, Maxim and more than 10 other companies are targeting this market space. New business models are built and more fabless companies are likely to be involved in the combo market. Details on newcomer technologies and roadmaps are provided in the report.
Value is moving to function delivery with embedded sensor fusion
Sensor fusion developments must be taken seriously. There has been hype about it for many years and now we start to see commercial implementation. The first real products with sensor fusion are already on the market, such as sensor hubs in the latest smartphones and tablets from Samsung and more recently by Apple, with the M7 processor in iPhone 5S. In addition, GPS chipsets with indoor navigation capability relying on MEMS sensors are now available from CSR, Qualcomm and Broadcom.
Source: http://www.researchandmarkets.com