Acceleration/yaw sensors may be down, but not for long

USA: After punching through the $1 billion barrier in 2008, the market for MEMS-based acceleration and yaw sensors will suffer its first significant decline ever this year, but a recovery is expected to start in the second half of 2009, and sales are forecast to set a new record-high of $1.3 billion in 2011, according to IC Insights' new 2009 Optoelectronics, Sensors, and Discretes (O-S-D) Report.

Like all other semiconductor categories, acceleration and yaw sensors—including accelerometers and gyroscope chips—are feeling the effects of the economic recession that began in 2008.

Sales in the acceleration/yaw sensor category are expected to fall 19 percent to $861 million in 2009 after growing 23 percent in 2008 to a record-high $1.07 billion. IC Insights' new O-S-D Report shows acceleration/yaw sensors became the largest semiconductor sensor category in 2008, surpassing magnetic-field sensors (which totaled $1.02 billion) for the first time ever due to strong growth in low-cost accelerometers used in cell phones, video-game controllers, and new portable systems.

Between 2008 and 2013, worldwide revenues for acceleration and yaw sensors are projected to increase at a CAGR of 11.1 percent compared to 8 percent for the entire semiconductor market, based on the 2009 O-S-D Report's five-year forecast.

IC Insights expects acceleration/yaw sensor sales to hit $1.81 billion in 2013 with unit shipments reaching 1.43 billion worldwide.

In recent years, the acceleration/yaw sensor business has been transformed from a product category dominated by automotive safety applications to a high-volume chip market now driven by portable systems and consumer electronics.

In multimedia smartphones —- such as Apple's iPhone and many new look-alike 3G handsets -- low-cost 3-axis accelerometers are being used to determine how phones are being held so that touch-screen displays can automatically rotate images into portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal) modes.

A growing number of accelerometers are being used in new portable "dead-reckoning" navigation systems, which calculate their locations from measurements of movements. Inertial sensors are also providing drop detection/protection in notebook computers, cameras, and other portable products, and they are working their way into motion-control and gesture-recognition applications in interactive video games and consumer products.

Overall, worldwide sales of all semiconductor sensors—including pressure and magnetic-field sensors—are expected to rise at a CAGR of 7.6 percent in the five-year forecast period, reaching $3.9 billion in 2013, according to the 2009 O-S-D Report. Revenues for sensors built with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology—mostly pressure sensors and acceleration/yaw devices—are forecast to reach $2.4 billion in 2013, representing a CAGR of 9.1 percent in the 2008-2013 forecast period of the IC Insights report.

Source: IC Insights