MEMS microphones to be $2.3bn market in 2027

Author: EIS Release Date: Oct 27, 2022

The consumer MEMS microphone market is expected to reach almost $2.3 billion in 2027, says Yole SystemPlus.

 

Knowles is the main player the MEMS  microphones representing 46% of the total components, followed by Goermicro with 29%.

 

MEMSensing, Zilltek and Novosense are the new players.

 

Based on thesample of 76 phones during 2020-2021: Knowles is the leader in MEMS microphones integrated into  smartphones, with 43% of the total smartphones opened.

 

Goermicro follows with 32%, and Omron with 12%. More than 25% of the design win represented by other  manufacturers: MEMSensing, Novosense, Zilltek, BSE, TDK-Invensense, and Hosiden.

 

The interest in the consumer microphone market is massively increasing with  the main driver being wireless earbuds.

 

Goermicro and Knowles are two main players on the market, with market share of 30% and 27% respectively, based on 2021 revenue data.

 

One of the main market drivers is that the phone manufacturer integrates a multiple MEMS microphone into a single smartphone device.

 

For examples, the recent Samsung smartphones incorporate three microphones while the latest Apple IPhone integrates already 4 devices not including the headphones.

 

The common manufacturing approach for MEMS microphones used by most of the players nowadays is still the capacitive microphone with a single or dual backplate and a movable membrane.

 

Even if package type and package integration are similar for all the analyzed MEMS Microphones, there’s a big difference for the ASIC technology node, size, and metal layers.

 

For example, BSE manufacturers its ASIC using the smallest technology node (0.09µm) among all analyzed references compared to 0.5µm used in MEMSensing and Novosense microphones.

 

Furthermore, the MEMS processes and design are more repetitive. Therefore, the type of structure is the same.

 

However, the differences in the design are observed at different levels: size of diaphragm, number, and shape of the acoustic holes.

 

For Knowles, one of the main Apple suppliers, many things have changed, for instance the significant decrease of the package footprint and MEMS die area, and usage of the MEMS microphones with only one transducer in the recent Apple devices.

 

Moreover, the Knowles approach of ASIC die dicing using plasma etching technique has been observed as well for the ASICs dies in BSE microphones.

 

The increase % of the market shares taken by the Asian MEMS Microphone suppliers is notable. For an instance, Samsung is supplied by MEMSensing, Microsoft and Huawei by Zilltek.

 

For this report, Yole SystemPlus looked at a sample of 247 smartphones and more than 20 other electronic devices such as wearables, tablets, smart home released during the last six years.