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Silicon Sensing expands MEMS foundry, aims to deliver five-fold increase in output

Silicon Sensing Systems announced that it will expand its MEMS foundry in Japan, moving into a new purpose-built facility, reportedly allowing the company to meet significantly increased demand for its MEMS inertial sensors and sputtered thin film PZT MEMS device wafers. The new facility will increase floorspace to 3,000 square meters, which will immediately more than double current wafer throughput and deliver scope for a five-fold increase in output over the next five years, in line with the company's current market growth predictions. To keep up with the volume and price pressures in the thin film PZT MEMS sector, Silicon Sensing said it is already expanding its 8-inch wafer line production. This expansion forms part of a major two-year investment program which will upgrade tooling, capabilities, and capacity, and comes as Silicon Sensing celebrates 20 years in the MEMS business during which time the company has delivered over 30 million devices worldwide.

MEMS maker Micro-Inertial announces high performance IMU and motion sensing systems

Micro-Inertial has announced the development of IMU and motion sensing systems that the company says deliver new levels of performance and reliability with broad temperature stability, high vibration immunity, scale factor, and bias drift. According to Micro-Inertial, the technology offers significantly improved cost, reliability, power, and operating performance characteristics over existing MEMS based IMU systems, particularly in applications where temperature and vibration stability, small form-factor, and light weight are important.

TDK to acquire MEMS maker InvenSense for $1.3 billion in cash

TDK Corporation and MEMS maker InvenSense entered into a definitive agreement this week with TDK agreeing to acquire all of the outstanding InvenSense shares for cash for a total acquisition price of $1.3 billion. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies. Completion of the transaction is expected in second quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018.  According to TDK, this acquisition promotes further growth in sensor and actuator products, which is an important part of the company's strategic growth plan.  The transaction brings together a more complete portfolio of sensor and software solutions spanning inertial, pressure, microphone, and ultrasonic sensor products from InvenSense, with TDK's existing pressure, temperature, electric current and various other sensors.  The acquisition will be completed through a merger of a newly created subsidiary of TDK with and into InvenSense, with InvenSense continuing following the merger as a wholly-owned subsidiary of TDK.

MEMS maker InvenSense sees big opportunities for sensors in drone and virtual reality applications

With a saturated smartphone market where the number of sensor units per device appears to have peaked, MEMS product companies are pursuing new market opportunities.  Two emerging sensor-rich applications are drones and virtual reality (VR).  Drones use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for positioning, orientation, maintaining direction and flight paths, and a slew of other sensors for stability control (tilt sensor), navigation (magnetic sensor) and elevation control (pressure sensor).  VR headsets and accessories rely on fast and accurate motion sensors to track movements and gestures.  So how are the major consumer MEMS product companies approaching these new opportunities?  We recently sat down with Behrooz Abdi, CEO of InvenSense, at the 5th annual InvenSense Developers Conference in Santa Clara, California to get some answers about the latest trends in MEMS and sensors.

MEMS maker mCube creates subsidiary to focus on indoor navigation business

mCube, a provider of MEMS motion sensors, announced this week the formation of a wholly-owned subsidiary, Ten Degrees, representing the first step towards the creation of an independent entity focused on indoor navigation.  Ten Degrees claims that it has developed a core navigation engine that takes advantage of positioning information derived from the inertial sensors available in virtually all current smartphones, combined with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals, and indoor map information to synthesize an accurate indoor location.  The company was officially established in April 2014 and is led by CEO Ramesh Raman.

MEMS based sensor maker InvenSense acquires Movea, Trusted Positioning for $81 million

InvenSense, a provider MEMS based sensor solutions, announced this week that it has signed definitive agreements to acquire Movea, a sensor fusion and context awareness software company, and Trusted Positioning (TPI), an indoor and outdoor location tracking software firm.  InvenSense will pay approximately $81 million for acquisition of both firms.  As of March 2014, InvenSense had approximately $117 million in cash and equivalents, so the transaction amount involved in these acquisitions will significantly reduce the company’s cash reserves.  On the other hand, some industry analysts have recently speculated that InvenSense may have won designs for the next generation of Apple’s products such as the iPhone 6, iWatch, and some of the new iPad business.  Interestingly, these two deals were announced just one week after Audience’s announcement that it is acquiring Sensor Platforms, another sensor fusion and context awareness software firm, for $41 million.

MEMS for consumer electronics: can InvenSense compete with ST and Bosch?

As average selling prices (ASPs) for sensors used in consumer electronics applications continue to drop, the competition among the top MEMS makers has intensified tremendously.  One of the most recent examples of this trend has been the intellectual property dispute between ST and InvenSense, which the latter company agreed to settle with a payment of $15 million.  Additionally, most of the industry analysts now project that while the number of motion sensors shipped for consumer electronics will continue to grow significantly, the revenues coming from these applications will essentially stay flat in 2014.  We recently spoke with Behrooz Abdi, the CEO of InvenSense, about his perspectives on the recent industry trends, as well as his vision for the company, their recent market and financial results, and how they plan to stay competitive in the future.

MEMS foundry Tronics develops piezoresistive nanowire inertial MEMS sensor

One year after announcing the commercialization program of CEA-Leti's MEMS and NEMS technologies, MEMS foundry Tronics has successfully designed and manufactured the first batch of the six degree-of-freedom (6DOF) MEMS motion sensor chips based on the piezoresistive nanowire technology, with three accelerometers and three gyroscopes on a single die.  With a reported die size of less than 4 mm², the company claims that its 6DOF MEMS chip is one of the smallest in the industry, and further optimization will make it the smallest.

MEMS makers ST, InvenSense announce settlement of pending patent litigation

STMicroelectronics and InvenSense, the leading makers of MEMS based motion sensors, announced this week that they have settled all pending proceedings between them and have entered into a patent cross license agreement.  The two companies had instituted various proceedings beginning in May 2012 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC).  This settlement and patent cross license agreement resolves all such actions.  Under terms of the settlement, neither ST nor InvenSense has made any admission of liability with respect to such proceedings.  Other terms between the parties have not been disclosed.

Tronics delivers its millionth high performance inertial MEMS sensor

After more than a decade in the business, Tronics has sold more than one million high performance inertial MEMS sensors. These products were primarily high-performance accelerometers and gyroscopes.  In markets where yearly volumes are typically in the thousands, one million is a significant number.  High-performance inertial MEMS have been one of Tronics key businesses for about 15 years.  The company has been involved in all aspects of the sensor products -- from MEMS design to MEMS manufacturing, through ASIC integration, packaging, test and calibration.