LONDON – The annual revenues generated by MEMS components used in mobile consumer equipment, including sensors, audio, displays and RF, will exceed $6 billion in 2016, according to analysis company Juniper Research Ltd. The equipment includes phones, computers and e-readers.
The biggest opportunity lies in audio and RF MEMS which have been developed but are only just beginning to be deployed Juniper (Basingstoke, England) concluded.
The categories identified by Juniper are the established mobile MEMS, which includes accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes; those in the initial stages of deployment including displays, RF MEMS, pressure sensors and microphones; and future applications including joysticks, temperature and humidity sensors, silicon speakers and scanning MEMS for picoprojectors.
"It is worth noting that MEMS sensors are expected to become an important differentiator for mobile device manufacturers towards enabling different capabilities and functionalities, including location based and navigation services," said analyst Nitin Bhas, in a statement. "There are lots of additional functionalities that smartphones and tablets will pick up over time and those capabilities have already started to appear such as stabilisation control," he added.
High quality audio input is likely to require the integration of multiple microphones and this leads Juniper to predict the total number of MEMS microphones present in mobile devices shipped in 2016 will be 2 billion.
RF MEMS as a means of improving performance and power efficiency of wireless subsystems are likely to found in most products by that time. Juniper said.
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