Yole Développement Releases Annual Ranking of MEMS Companies

Yole Développement: Top 30 MEMS Companies

Yole Développement recently published its annual ranking of the top 30 MEMS companies based on 2009 sales revenue — and it’s heartening to see so many MEMS Industry Group members represented among them.

Trip Report: Fab Owners Association 1st Quarter Meeting

Contributed by Monica Takacs, Director of Marketing and Membership, MEMS Industry Group

On February 11, I visited sunny Arizona for the Fab Owners Association’s quarterly meeting hosted by Microchip, a provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors. Microchip also provided attendees with a fab tour–an impressive facility and very interesting for me to see, because I don’t come from a manufacturing background.

MEMS Enabling New Features, Better Performance for Mobile Devices at Mobile World Congress 2010

Whether it’s a new netbook, iPad, or smartphone that has your eye, almost everyone seems to crave sort of mobile information and communication device right now. Here’s just a couple of MEMS-related announcements from Mobile World Congress 2010, going on right now in Barcelona:

HP Finds Novel Use for MEMS Inkjet Printhead Technology

HP and Shell are working together to re-purpose HP’s MEMS technology for use in oil drilling and exploration (Drilling with print heads: Shell and HP develop seismic sensor system – 15/02/2010 – Computer Weekly).

Trip Report: ASME nEMB 2010 Conference – Part II

Contributed by Karen Lightman, Managing Director, MEMS Industry Group

For part I of this post, see Trip Report: ASME nEMB 2010 Conference – Part I.

The conference began on February 7 with a day-long program/tutorial on nanomedicine, which I heard was an impressive program focused on graduate and undergraduate engineering students. I attended the programs on February 8 &9, kicked off with a keynote from Dr.Andrew Eschenbach, Former Director of the National Cancer Institute and former FDA Commissioner. Dr. Eschenbach’s presentation was remarkable in that he focused the audience to not go into nanomedicine for the glory of it, but simply to improve the quality of life of humankind.

Trip Report: ASME nEMB 2010 Conference – Part I

Contributed by Karen Lightman, Managing Director, MEMS Industry Group

I am back in Pittsburgh’s snowmageddon after being in sunny Houston to attend the ASME First Global Congress on NanoEngineering for Medicine and Biology (nEMB) held February 7-10, 2010. For those of you who attended MIG’s MEMS Executive Congress 2009, you’ll remember how Dr. Mauro Ferrari wowed the audience with his keynote speech on silicon as a transformational material for medicine. I came to the ASME nEMB conference at the invitation of Dr. Ferrari and his Department of Nanomedicine and Biomedical Engineering (nBME) at the University of Texas at Houston.

MEMS Enables Post-Surgery Patient Monitoring Via Cell Phone

Sensor device-maker Gentag is commercializing a disposable “skin patch” sensing platform that will allow otrthopedic surgery patients to monitor themselves during their recovery. Gentag has already developed a number of other disposable diagnostic patches, including devices for fever and diabetes monitoring.

Yole: Infectious diseases will be best market for on-site diagnostics, but development will take some time still

Contributed by Frédéric Breussin, Project Manager, Microfluidics, Yole Développement

Despite its exciting potential, point-of-care diagnostics has yet to develop into the big market many expected. Testing for infectious diseases now looks like the most promising markets, as companies develop more sophisticated integrated systems that go beyond simple immunoassays to molecular diagnostics at reasonable cost.

iSuppli: 2009—The Hockey-Stick Year for MEMS

Contributed by Jérémie Bouchaud, Director & Principal Analyst, MEMS, iSuppli

The year 2009 started badly for MEMS, just like for the rest of the economy. Unlike other MEMS analysts who seem to believe that MEMS is immune to the economic crisis and that revenue stayed exactly flat in 2008 and 2009, the latest revenue reported to iSuppli from MEMS manufacturers show that shipments were still up 10% from 2008 even though revenue was down 8.6%. This followed a similar revenue drop of 4.8% in 2008.

The economic crisis resulted in the closing of a number of fabs, including Colibrys, which closed its Texas-based 6-inch fab, leaving the company with its original 4-inch fab in Switzerland. Other foundries suffered, too, and most saw revenues declining by 20%-30% compared to 2008, with staff cuts following in proportion. iSuppli also noticed that a number of companies have extensively made use of unpaid leaves, especially in the first half of the year.