Taylor,
On the other hand, no company is likely to supply everything.
Clearly, this seems to be the case. I’m very interested in discovering those companies that can support a set of consumer applications using MEMS sensors. A smart company would go after the largest markets with the fattest margins.
What do we have in smart phones now? As far as I can tell in the consumer market, there are MEMS gyros, accelerometers, magnetometers and some biometric sensors. I haven’t forgotten the microphone market, but this seems fairly narrow for now. We can only guess where the other half-dozen sensors will fit into the market in the distant future. In my view it would be foolish of InvenSense to spread themselves so thin as to lose focus on the current market.
Clayton Christensen suggests that in the early stages of technical developments, it is often necessary to tightly integrate different modules to maximize performance. The integration must be done by a relatively small group of experts, as opposed to doing it across an industry. Once the technology has matured enough, then different players can offer swappable modules. I suggest that this could take a decade for MEMS. I strongly believe that we are still in the early stages of development and that someone must provide the required performance and this will be done through a very tight integration using proprietary software. The big question for InvenSense will be if they can outperform other in-house solutions. I will make by bet and take my chances.
It's a big market --- I'm still confident that INVN will be a key player as they get this all sorted out.
I think INVN will have some success in the integration of MEMS sensors. They will need to hire some young, smart engineers to make it all happen. We will need to stay alert in the months and years ahead.
Regards |
