MEMS, Microfluidics and Microsystems Executive Review: Freescale looks to expand its MEMS product portfolio

Freescale Semiconductor has been a major player in the MEMS industry with its automotive sensors business and, more recently, with its growing portfolio of consumer MEMS based applications. We recently spoke with Dave Monk, Automotive Operations Manager for the Sensors and Actuators Solutions Division at Freescale, about his company's current MEMS related products as well as business prospects and trends for the future.

MEMS Investor Journal: Can you give an overview of your MEMS activities and operations?

Dave Monk: Sure, as you probably know, Freescale currently has revenues of $5-6 billion per year. The Transportation & Standard Products Group is the largest of our business operations. It is divided into three divisions -- sensors and actuators, analog mixed-signal and power, and
microcontrollers. Naturally, our MEMS business is within the sensors and actuators group. In the sensors and actuators group, we have two main divisions -- automotive and consumer & industrial. I am involved with the automotive sensor and MEMS business and Ken Lenk is my
counterpart in the consumer & industrial operation. The overall Sensor and Actuator Solutions Division is headed up by our General Manager Demetre Kondylis.

MEMS Investor Journal: What trends do you currently see with MEMS devices which your customers use?

Dave Monk: On the automotive side, the business is very strong -- there are now 55-60 million cars made per year and the number of sensors per car is projected to increase from 49 to 62 by 2014. On the consumer side, as we and other companies have seen, MEMS based devices are
starting to come into the mainstream. Cell phone applications have excellent prospects. There are now 800 million cell phones on the market and manufacturers are looking for opportunities to differentiate their devices from competitors'. MEMS based sensors offer a great opportunity to do this -- for example, our three axis accelerometer can now be placed into a <1.0 mm package to be used in thin cell phones such as the Razor model. Also, the smaller MEMS devices and packaging can allow us to place multiple sensors into a single package.

MEMS Investor Journal: On the automotive side, what are you seeing with the tire pressure monitoring market?

Dave Monk: The current mandate is for all automakers to have tire pressure monitoring sensors in all of their 2008 models. So, by 2009 all new cars in the US should have these sensors and many models already have this capability today. We are also using our one and two axis accelerometers to provide better power management for tire pressure sensor devices. Another trend we see is the ability to have more embedded control at the sensing point which is better for sensing and power management and efficiency of the tire sensors.

MEMS Investor Journal: What are you doing to continue to differentiate yourself from competition?

Dave Monk: Our main strength continues to be our experience and expertise on the system level as well as our extensive product portfolio. We can sense the data, process it and integrate the entire component system. We also have the scale and manufacturing expertise with our automotive business and our consumer business is now benefiting from this scale. In turn, the consumer business is now helping us come up with ideas for new opportunities and innovation for our automotive business.

MEMS Investor Journal: What has your M&A activity been and what your plans for the future?

Dave Monk: This is actually a good question because 5 to 10 years ago we focused primarily on internal growth and had centralized R&D with specific areas of expertise such as surface micromachining. In the last 5 years we have become more willing to license technologies. For
example, we've licensed pressure sensor technology from Fraunhofer in Duisburg, Germany and we have also worked with CEA LETI in France. So, internally, we've become more of a "little r & Big D" organization. Therefore, we are increasingly looking for more partnership and licensing opportunities. Also, although we have not done any major acquisitions in the MEMS area so far, we are looking to do more of that in the future.

MEMS Investor Journal: How do you typically look for partnership and licensing opportunities?

Dave Monk: We typically get quite a few requests for partnerships and we speak with people at conferences and so forth: opportunistically. However, strategically, we currently have interest in new power train applications, gyros for stability control, and some others. We are also
looking for applications which provide active (vs. passive) safety such as radar and even optical and IR. On the consumer side, portable devices such as cell phones and PDAs are a big market with applications such as autoscrolling, power management, user interface, location tracking including in z-axis via pressure sensors. Also, household appliances are an interesting set of applications.

In the longer term, we are also looking to do more work with industrial sensing and controls. In all of these cases, and especially with the cell phone applications, we are looking to bring in additional expertise from external sources with licensing or acquisitions.