TSMCs MEMS foundry business grows 80 percent in 2012
TSMC was one of the most successful although ST is the strongest in this market
In 2012, TSMC's MEMS foundry business enjoyed around 80 percent growth, achieving approximately $42 million in sales.
In Yole Développement's annual MEMS foundry sector rankings, the Taiwanese foundry's MEMS business is now the largest of any open foundry.
This puts it shoulder-to-shoulder with pure-play specialty MEMS foundries like TELEDYNEDALSA who made $39 million.
Yole claimsTSMC's strong growth is mainly the result of a production ramp-up to support InvenSense's ~$40 million in additional inertial sensor sales.
What's more, TSMC manufactures consumer MEMS devices for Analog Devices, and inkjet heads for Memjet.
Yole points out its figures only count the MEMS manufacturing value, not the value of the ASIC, even if bonded to the MEMS device.
Thanks to its contract production for Hewlett Packard, STMicroelectronics continues to dominate the MEMS foundry business. Though ST's foundry income declined about 20 percent last year when demand for HP's inkjet heads dropped off, its $200 million in revenue still accounted for almost a third of the ~ $600 million MEMS foundry business.
Meanwhile, Sony's foundry revenues benefited from strong MEMS microphone demand for mobile phones and tablets. Thanks to this, along with Sony's contract production for Knowles Electronics, the company achieved about 30 percent growth.
Beneath these two large-contract/single-customer producers exists a tight cluster of leading open foundries with sales between $30 million - $40 million. These include TSMC, Teledyne DALSA, Silex Microsystems, and the combined sales of Asia Pacific Microsystems and its parent, UMC.
Foundries in the $10 million - $20 million range continue to fight for a piece of the high-value, low-volume specialty MEMS manufacturing market.
Overall, however, the foundry business is not seeing the same fast growth as the MEMS industry, since IDMs have captured most of the increase in the high-volume consumer mobile business.
One newcomer to Yole's rankings is GLOBALFOUNDRIES, a MEMS company that experienced around 50 percent growth thanks to production ramp-up for its customers, including InvenSense.
Yole says each company has the process knowledge to create its own devices. And this renders moot the idea of industry standardisation and the emergence of large foundries.
