Research Direction
There has been keen interest in sensors, a pivotal component in wearable devices, as more and more items like the Galaxy Gear and Google Glass are penetrating the market. So there is an apparent need to enhance domestic sensor technology and products that are currently trailing behind China.
Park Hyo-deok, director of the Korea Electronics Technology Institute, spoke at the System Semiconductor Forum held at El Tower, Seoul, on March 27. He pointed out, “The domestic sensor industry has been stagnant since the 1980s. Now our sensor industry is standing at 7th in the world, even behind China.”
Currently, 79 percent of the world’s sensor market is occupied by America, Japan, and Germany. China is 6th.
According to KETI, as of the end of last year, the domestic sensor market size was standing at US$6.041 billion, accounting for 6.8 percent of the global market (US$89 billion).
The government will inject some 151 billion won (US$141 million) over the period of 2015-2020, to strengthen the competitiveness of domestic sensors.
Sensors played an important role in various products even before the introduction of wearable devices. In smart phones are accelerometers and illumination sensors, and in cars are object sensors for parking. In fact, a smartphone is equipped with more than 20 sensors, and an average car has more than 160.
Another thing to consider is that when autonomous vehicles are commercialized, the vehicle sensor market is expected to explode.
The director predicted, “Previous sensors only converted analog signals into electric ones, but in the future, it will develop into smart sensors that will send extremely precise data to the processor through their built-in algorithms with self-judgment and analysis functions. Sensors will become even more important on the back of another promising market, which is the remote medical diagnosis field.”