Source: IoT Capital Theory
Organized and published by IoT Think Tank
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—— [Guide] ——
The global IoT market is expected to reach $11 trillion by 2025, and the corresponding sensor market will also reach hundreds of billions of dollars. Currently, it is mainly dominated by a few companies from the US, Japan, and Germany, such as Bosch, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Freescale, Infineon, Philips, etc.
As the largest sensor consumer market in the world, the construction of the IoT industry circle in China is imperative. It is predicted that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the annual compound growth rate of China’s sensor market will exceed 30%.
Sensors are the “five senses” of the IoT, used to collect various types of information and convert them into specific signals. They can collect information such as identity, motion status, geographical location, posture, pressure, temperature, humidity, light, sound, smell, etc.
Broadly speaking, sensors include traditional sensitive components, RFID, barcodes, QR codes, radar, cameras, card readers, infrared sensing elements, etc.
Data shows that the global IoT market is expected to reach $11 trillion by 2025, and the corresponding sensor market will also reach hundreds of billions of dollars. Currently, it is mainly dominated by a few companies from the US, Japan, and Germany, such as Bosch, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Freescale, Infineon, Philips, etc.
Sensor technology started relatively late in China, and it was established as a national key project during the 7th Five-Year Plan. Currently, China has basically mastered the relevant technologies for mid-to-low-end sensors, forming a complete industrial system. Local companies in China have a small market share, with representative companies such as Hanwei Electronics and Huagong Technology.
Below, the Capital Theory summarizes the basic situation of IoT sensor providers at home and abroad.
Overview of domestic and foreign IoT sensor providers
Foreign sensor providers
Bosch
Bosch is one of the industrial companies in Germany, engaged in automotive and intelligent transportation technology, industrial technology, consumer goods, and energy and building technology.
Bosch has over 20 years of experience in the MEMS sensor field. As a leading global supplier of automotive components, Bosch’s MEMS sensor journey began with automotive electronics. Today, there are over 50 MEMS sensors used in automobiles, such as well-known automotive safety features like ABS, ESP, and airbags, and in comfort features like navigation and in-car voice entertainment systems, where Bosch automotive electronic sensors play an indispensable role. Since 2005, Bosch has started to make efforts in the consumer electronics sensor field and has quickly become a market pioneer.
The inertial motion sensors and environmental sensors provided by Bosch allow consumers to enjoy a convenient, efficient, and safe life. 75% of Bosch’s MEMS sensors are used in consumer electronics, and three-quarters of smartphones worldwide are equipped with Bosch sensors.
In 2013, Bosch established a dedicated IoT devices and solutions business unit to seize new growth opportunities. Based on sensing, Bosch has developed and produced a series of solutions for different industries. In the industrial field, companies do not need to make large-scale investments in new equipment for smart production lines. By applying the sensors provided, factories can connect existing equipment to the IoT, achieving data-driven management in Industry 4.0. In addition, the IoT sensors, devices, and solutions provided by Bosch can also be applied in various fields such as smart homes, connected transportation, and smart logistics.
Honeywell
A previous report from Honeywell stated that there are 14 major categories of sensors in the world, which can be divided into 65 families, and if classified by technology, there are 366 types. Honeywell’s sensors encompass 32 of the 65 sensor families, covering nearly 50%.
Honeywell sees sensor applications not only limited to food, water, and air but also in the medical and health-related markets, as well as in transportation and logistics, including commercial vehicles, passenger cars, and public transportation.
STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics is a diversified, global leading automotive semiconductor manufacturer. Currently, STMicroelectronics has three major business segments and six product lines, with the sixth product line being sensors, such as MEMS sensors and image sensors.
STMicroelectronics uses FD-SOI technology, which can reduce power consumption by more than 50%. The derived fields include RF, ultra-low power, and embedded flash memory. The MEMS sensor field includes motion sensors, environmental sensors, microphones, and micro actuators.
As a world-leading provider of IoT products and solutions, STMicroelectronics will focus on four major sub-markets: smart industry, smart cities, smart homes, and smart hardware.
Analog Devices
Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) is a leading supplier specializing in semiconductor sensors and signal processing ICs.
Analog Devices’ inertial detection products and technologies have been highly praised and are currently sparking a new generation of design revolution in various application fields such as industrial, medical, consumer electronics, communications, and automotive.
Freescale
Freescale Semiconductor is a global leading semiconductor company headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA. It focuses on embedded processing solutions and provides technologies including microprocessors, microcontrollers, sensors, analog integrated circuits, and connectivity for automotive, networking, industrial, and consumer electronics markets.
Freescale’s RF product portfolio is extensive, mainly applied in wireless infrastructure, wireless personal area networks, general amplifiers, broadcasting, consumer electronics, medical, smart energy, military, and industrial markets, leading the development of RF technology and continuing to be a leader in developing high-performance, high-reliability products using the latest technology.
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments is the world’s largest manufacturer of analog circuit technology components and a leading multinational semiconductor company known for developing, manufacturing, and selling semiconductors and computer technology, mainly engaged in innovative digital signal processing and analog circuits research, manufacturing, and sales. In addition to the semiconductor business, it also provides sensor and control, educational products, and digital light processing solutions.
The sensor and control division of Texas Instruments provides sensor and control technologies that make televisions, cars, airplanes, computers, camcorders, refrigerators, microwaves, and toasters safer and more efficient. Its RFID systems are also changing the landscape of security, inventory management, and retail consumer identification applications.
Infineon
Infineon Technologies was officially established on April 1, 1999, in Munich, Germany. It is one of the world’s leading semiconductor companies. Infineon can provide various semiconductor solutions, including microprocessors, LED drivers, sensors, and integrated circuits and power management chips for automotive applications.
Infineon’s sensor technologies, such as gas sensors, optical sensors, MEMS microphones, and other various sensors, are widely used in emerging markets such as IoT, drones, smartphones, and home automation.
Intermec
Intermec is a leader in the automatic identification industry from the USA and is also a company that provides comprehensive solutions in the automatic identification field.
Intermec’s product range includes barcode printers, barcode scanners, handheld data collection terminals, fixed industrial terminals, vehicle-mounted data terminals, wireless network products, data collection servers, barcode labels and ribbons, mobile computers, mobile printers, communication servers, RFID tags, RFID tag printers, readers, and various application software and tools.
Philips
Philips, founded in 1891 in the Netherlands, mainly produces products in lighting, home appliances, and medical systems. Philips Lighting launched the CityTouch smart connected road lighting system in 2014, which has been successfully applied in major cities around the world, such as Los Angeles, USA, and Jakarta, Indonesia. This system is one of the important measures to promote the construction of smart cities globally.
In 2017, Philips Lighting launched the CityTouch flex smart connected road lighting system in the Chinese market. This system uses streetlights as entry points for the IoT and can be integrated with various smart city applications, including urban emergency systems, traffic signal management systems, security monitoring systems, and crowd and vehicle flow detection systems, fully supporting the operation of smart cities.
The Philips CityTouch flex smart connected road lighting system is gradually being deployed in China, with the first batch already implemented in Changzhou, Kunshan, and Beijing.
Domestic sensor providers
Hanwei Electronics
Henan Hanwei Electronics Co., Ltd. is located in the High-tech Industrial Development Zone of Zhengzhou, Henan Province. The company has a history of twenty years in the research and production of gas sensors and is one of the earliest manufacturers engaged in gas sensor research and production in China. It now has a relatively complete production process technology for gas sensors and detection alarm products, forming a series of nearly 50 varieties of sintered semiconductor, catalytic combustion, and hot-wire gas sensors and gas detection instruments.
The company relies on the IoT foundation to vigorously develop ITS product series. It has formed an intelligent transportation industry and products mainly based on card readers, red-light violation capture systems, and various speed measurement systems. Among them, the police alcohol testing device has provided strong support for traffic police departments in cracking down on drunk driving behavior in recent years.
Su Zhou Gude
Since its establishment, Suzhou Gude has focused on semiconductor rectifier devices, power diodes, rectifier bridges, and IC packaging testing.
Suzhou Gude Electronics Co., Ltd. subsidiary Minghao Sensor raised 95 million yuan in Series A financing. Minghao Sensor mainly engages in R&D, design, and production of MEMS sensors and provides related technical services. The main product directions include accelerometers, gyroscopes (under development), pressure sensors, magnetic sensors, and MEMS microphones, aiming to provide the required products and integration solutions for consumer electronics, automotive electronics, and industrial automation.
Huagong Technology
Huagong Technology Industry Co., Ltd. is a national key high-tech enterprise that relies on over a decade of accumulated sensor technology, optical communication technology, information traceability technology, and laser processing technology to help achieve the intelligent interconnection of objects, equipment, and people.
Huagong Technology focuses on “laser technology and its applications” as its main business. Based on its established industrial landscape of laser equipment manufacturing, optical communication devices, laser holographic anti-counterfeiting, sensors, and information traceability, it concentrates its superior resources on developing “smart manufacturing” and “IoT technology” in response to the global trend of “re-industrialization” and its own characteristics.
Kunlun Coast
Kunlun Coast is a new era industrial and agricultural IoT hardware manufacturer with a history of twenty years, providing pressure and liquid level sensors, level transmitters, temperature and humidity transmitters, gateway products, and services for domestic and foreign IoT and cloud computing enterprises.
As the IoT wireless sensor, data exchange gateway, and cloud data docking service system continue to improve, Kunlun Coast is transforming from a pure hardware manufacturer to a field data provider, offering a comprehensive package of data measurement, collection, recording, transmission, and docking services for process industry production sites, manufacturing production lines, modern agriculture, warehousing, logistics, and the entire cold chain.
Minxin Microelectronics
Suzhou Minxin Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2007 and is one of the earliest MEMS R&D companies in China. It has several breakthrough inventions and world-class research achievements involving key MEMS technologies. The main products of Minxin Microelectronics include MEMS microphones, pressure sensors, inertial sensors, etc.
Compared to traditional electret microphones, MEMS silicon microphones have many advantages such as surface mountable, high reliability, strong RF interference resistance, and small size.
SMIC
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is one of the world’s leading integrated circuit chip foundries and the largest and most advanced integrated circuit chip manufacturing enterprise in mainland China.
The company widely applies its process technology in CMOS image sensors (CIS), diversified eNVM technology platforms, IoT Solutions, mixed-signal/RF process technology, display driver chips (DDIC), CMOS micro-electromechanical systems, and non-volatile memory fields.
The company also provides a MEMS sensor technology platform, capable of creating a single-chip system (SoC) that integrates RF, baseband, microprocessor, embedded flash memory, and MEMS sensors, as well as offering one-stop services for system-in-package (SiP), wafer-level packaging (WLP), and 2.5D packaging.
AVIC Electromechanical
The company was founded in 1965 and is a key enterprise controlled by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, mainly engaged in the R&D, production, and sales of resistance strain gauges, strain sensors, and comprehensive performance testing equipment for automobiles and related application systems.
As a leading enterprise in the domestic electromechanical industry, AVIC Electromechanical ranks third in global sales of resistance strain gauges, with the highest market share of strain sensors in China. Meanwhile, AVIC Electromechanical’s products have been sold to North America, Europe, and many other countries, making it one of the main suppliers of strain gauges and strain sensors worldwide.
Since its establishment, the company has focused on independent innovation, actively conducting design and research in infrared optics, imaging circuits, image processing, artificial intelligence, mechanical structure, and system engineering.
The company currently has the only domestically controlled 8-inch 0.25μm batch production line for vanadium oxide uncooled infrared detectors. The application direction of its products is gradually expanding from current security monitoring, industrial detection, fire rescue, national defense security, and vehicle-mounted night vision metallurgy and petrochemical to more civil fields. Future main application scenarios include smart homes, automotive electronics, smartphones, drones, smart wearable devices, new energy, medical auxiliary diagnosis, and machine vision.
With the growing trend of expanding the sensing end of the IoT, the gradual popularization of infrared as an important physical quantity input will create various application possibilities.
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