Market for Smartphone, Tablet Sensors to Jump Amid Apple-Samsung Competition

The market for sensors used in smartphones and tablets is forecast to triple for the 2012-2018 period, driven by competition between Apple and Samsung for sensor dominance, said a report from IHS Technology (http://bit.ly/10qLhmA). Worldwide market revenue for sensors used in smartphones and tablets will rise to $6.5 billion in 2018, from $2.3 billion in 2012, with the fastest growth coming from emerging devices whose revenue will reach $2.3 billion in 2018, IHS said. “The mobile market is moving beyond simply integrating established devices like motion sensors and now is including next-generation features like fingerprint and environment/health sensors,” said Marwan Boustany, IHS senior analyst for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and sensors. Established sensors in mobile devices include motion sensors, light sensors and MEMS microphones, while emerging sensors include fingerprint, optical pulse, humidity, gas, ultraviolet (UV) and thermal imaging. Apple initiated the market for fingerprint sensors in mobile devices with the release of the iPhone 5s in 2013, and IHS predicts shipments of fingerprint-enabled devices will reach 1.4 billion units in 2020. The fingerprint sensor market “has all its requirements for success converging at the right time,” Boustany said, citing Apple Pay and the growing number of banks supporting mobile payments and biometric authentication. Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and Huawei’s Ascend Mate 7 also sport fingerprint sensors, IHS said. Meanwhile, Samsung pioneered the use of humidity sensors in the Galaxy S4, a pulse sensor in the S5 and a UV sensor in the Note 4, and IHS expects Chinese smartphone OEMs to be the next driver for the new generation of sensors. Humidity sensors have been used in Chinese handsets since 2011, and air-quality sensors are expected to find growing usage in the China market, IHS said, citing specific demand for sensors that can detect particle pollution in large Chinese cities. Thermal imagers using microbolometer sensors emerged from the technology of forward-looking infrared (FLIR) systems in 2014 as accessories for the iPhone 5s, but it will take several years before they’ll be incorporated into phones due to cost, IHS said. Samsung is expected to adopt gas/chemical sensors in the Note 6 for introduction in 2016 when the technology is more mature and use cases have been clearly defined, IHS said.