STMicroelectronics ships three billionth MEMS chip
Laid side by side, the amount of MEMS sensor chips shipped by STMicroelectronics (ST) would exceed the height of Mount Everest (8.85km).
According to IHS, ST's total MEMS and sensor sales grew more than 19 percent in 2012, reaching a total of approximately $800 million.
In the largest of these markets, motion sensors in mobile handsets and tablets, ST's MEMS sales accounted for 48 percent of the market, well more than twice as large as that of its closest competitor, according to market analyst IHS.
"Our research shows that, in the mobile market, ST is the number one MEMS supplier across all of the important mobile handset operating systems," says Jeremie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. "Even in the highly competitive Android market, ST has nearly twice the market share of its nearest competitor."
ST's MEMS sensors have enabled motion-activated user interfaces in many different popular consumer devices, including most of the leading smart phones, tablets, personal media players, game consoles, digital still cameras and remotes, making these more accessible and appealing to people.
The firm's MEMS devices are also widely used for free-fall protection in laptop hard-disk drives, in many health and fitness products, and for car infotainment and enhanced navigation.
Today, they are being designed into new applications as varied as providing the crispest, clearest audio in mobile communications and adding localised weather/environmental monitoring capabilities to consumers' mobile devices.
"Sensors play a crucial role in the evolving wireless world, in enabling the intuitive gesture-based control that is increasingly expected as the norm and in paving the way for new services and user experiences," says Benedetto Vigna, ST Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Analogue, MEMS & Sensors Group.
"From sensors to secure communications, from power management to display driving and projection, ST solutions are enabling wave after wave of innovation in the wireless world that is changing the lives of people everywhere."
ST offers micro-machined accelerometers, gyroscopes, pressure sensors, magnetic sensors, and microphones and has the capability to integrate these in multi-sensor combos with on-board signal processing, control functions, sensor-fusion algorithms, and wireless connectivity.
The firm has more than 600 MEMS-related patent families to open new horizons in consumer electronics, healthcare, environmental sciences, and many other domains.
