Accelerating the mobile market

They make the Nintendo Wii's motion-sensing remote control vibrate in action, and they help Apple's iPhone self-orient from landscape to upright modes. Micro-electro mechanical systems accelerometers, made up of hundreds of tiny moving mechanical parts, are quickly making their way into consumer electronics and wireless handsets of all sorts. As a result, 2008 is poised to be the year these minute micro-machines make it big.

The arrival of another wildly popular consumer product that sells large numbers worldwide is all it will take to give this market a significant boost, said Douglas McEuen, senior analyst for ABI Research. MEMS accelerometers will have plenty of momentum moving forward, according to ABI, which predicts a 27% annual unit growth rate for the technology until at least 2012.

“I think that the iPhone success was real eye-opening to a lot of people — of which part of that success was having MEMS accelerometer capability,” McEuen said. “I would think that a lot of [original equipment manufacturers] will use some sort of MEMS accelerometers in the future.”

Robert De Nuccio, marketing manager for the MEMS division of STMicroelectronics, is willing to take that prediction further. He said that from a technological and commercial point of view, it is not unrealistic for all phones to eventually incorporate some type of MEMS technology. With its chips in both the Wii controller and the iPhone, the company is one of the big three MEMS accelerometer vendors in the U.S, along with Analog Devices and Freescale. All are working in the mobile handset space to expand accelerometers' potential uses.

Semiconductor manufacturer Freescale currently uses MEMS for shock detection in handsets — everything from a large shock caused by dropping the phone to a small shock from simply tapping it. These types of motions can enable functions of the phone, such as pre-programmed calling. Gestures could have the same effect.

“Motion detection is of great interest because you can use it for gesturing,” said Michelle Kelsey, marketing manager for inertial sensors for Freescale. “It can detect different hand gestures on the phone to run a different mode. Like if you take the phone and put it to your ear, that motion of putting it to your ear can be detected so it can answer a call.”

As an increasing number of phones are GPS-enabled — more than 550 million by 2012 according to ABI Research — MEMS technology is being added to handsets to allow users to maximize their small displays and see relevant sections of maps. Much like on the iPhone, MEMS enables consumers to flick the screen forward or away, left or right, to control which portion of the map they view — and that is only a hint of the potential when GPS meets MEMS. Today, when consumers are out of range and the GPS signal fades, so too does the technology's accuracy. But with accelerometers, sensors can determine from the last GPS signal where the consumer is located or headed.

The technology proposition for MEMS is an interesting one. It is not a pure, seamless device segment. Rather, it's a combination of mechanical elements on one side and consumer electronics on the other. The industry is starting small with the consumer electronic device that matters most to consumers: the handset. But in the future, this micro machine could become the technology of choice for most devices and applications, whether consumers know it is powering their motion or not.