(參考原文：MEMS developers target 'lifestyle products'，by George Leopold)
MUNICH, Germany — MEMS technology that is steadily making its way into cellphones, digital cameras and other consumer devices could soon make the leap to so-called "lifestyle products" where MEMS chips could provide easier-to-use interfaces.
"Anything that moves is a target for MEMS," claimed Leopold Beer, director of marketing for Bosch Sensortec (Reutlingen, German).
While MEMs devices like microphones, accelerometers and pressure sensors have been making their way into cellphones for applications like navigation, proponents of the technology predict it will become more pervasive as an interface.
Citing the success of the Wii game console, Christoph Wagner, a sensor application specialist with Analog Devices GmbH, predicted MEMs technology will make inroads into consumer markets like gaming and medical equipment.
Specific applications remain hard to define and challenging to develop, Wagner added, but the steady drop in unit prices for MEMS devices means they could eventually end up in a wider array of consumer products. Cutting the cost of producing MEMS devices while increasing performance could be accomplished by moving to larger wafer sizes and even outsourcing production, experts on a MEMS panel at the Electronica 2008 exhibition here agreed.
Other potential consumer markets for MEMS include digital TV and the set-top boxes that will control many receivers. As the amount of digital TV programming handled by set-tops grows, remote controls have become far more complex for consumers to use. Claire Jackoski of Freescale Semiconductor predicted that MEMS-based sensors like gyroscopes and accelerometers would allow consumers to simply wave a remote control to operate a digital TV set-top.
Fabio Pasolini of STMicroelectronics agreed that MEMS sensors will increasingly be used in "pointing devices" like button-less remote controls, adding that the technology will increasingly be applied "to things we use in our lives."
While MEMS applications appear to be expanding as the technology grows cheaper, the estimated $7 billion global market for MEMS is expected to cool if, as expected, consumer spending slows. An industry group also projected this week that the MEMS market could contract in 2009.
These market pressures will force MEMS manufacturers to reduce the cost of new MEMS-based systems before they are embraced by most consumers, industry experts said. Jeremie Bouchard, a MEMS industry analyst with iSuppli Deutschland, noted that emerging MEMS devices like two-axis gyroscopes currently remain too costly for consumer applications. Industry executives here countered that the unit price of gyroscopes will eventually decline just as accelerometer prices did once they reached volume production.
