Market and Technology Trends

High-End Inertial Sensing 2022

By Yole Intelligence — Jun 2022

Significant M&A and investment activities totaling almost $1B have revitalized the high-end inertial market, fostering the next waves of technology adoption

The high-end inertial sensor market is boosted by general and emerging trends

High-end inertial sensors span numerous markets. They are used as simple single-axis, low-cost configurations in industrial applications or multi-axis, highly integrated applications such as Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) and Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) high-cost and high-performance configurations in mobility (civil aviation) and defense & aerospace.
The high-end inertial system market is estimated to have been worth more than $3.1B in 2021. It will have a 6% Compound Annual Growth Rate from 2021-2027 (CAGR21-27), reaching $4.5B by 2027.
The market is boosted by general trends in traditional markets such as military modernization, A-PNT in defense and emerging trends in newer markets such as new space applications, robotics, logistics, automation and mobility.

M&A and fundraising revitalize the market

The high-end inertial sensor market is fragmented on the application side, but concentrated on the player side. Three well-established giants dominate the market: Honeywell, Northrop Grumman and Safran. A multitude of smaller players are specialized in specific technologies, markets and applications. And while the player landscape has been stable for many years, in the past two to three years we have seen an acceleration of fundraising and mergers and acquisitions (M&As) reaching in total almost $1B.
On the fundraising side, it is interesting to note that startups are getting money to develop gyroscopes on photonic integrated circuits such as Anello, ZPM and OSCP. FOG companies are also raising funds either by going public, such as Civitanavi and Fiberpro, or from venture capitalists and other investors, such as Advanced Navigation. On the M&A side, there were numerous deals recently, with the most notable and atypical one being iXblue’s acquisition by its customer ECA Group for almost $450M.
We think this funding and M&A trend will continue in the future. Small companies will continue to seek money for scaling operations. Big organizations will also acquire smaller companies that are specialized in their own markets/applications. Smaller companies will also acquire other smaller companies to gain more market share and survive in the market. One thing is for sure: the high-end inertial sensor industry is undergoing a transformation.

New technology adoption takes time to reach maturity

There are numerous gyroscope technologies in the market, and each is used for specific applications, depending on the application requirements. The market is very cautious with new technologies for legacy and strategic applications that have not been already proven in the field for many years. This leads to a long delay for new sensor technology adoption. Of course, this is not true for newer and more commercial applications with lower performance requirements.
A possible evolution of future high-end inertial sensor technologies can be estimated by analyzing different stages of past developments. Indeed, every 20-30 years, some change seems to appear in the market. New technologies are introduced, which co-exist with the others for quite some time, before the older ones start declining. This time scale seems to be incompressible. All new technologies experience that. In the coming years, HRGs should be the next technology to mature and bring enhanced Size, Weight, and Power (SWAP) balance. High-end MEMS could follow the same path within 10 years. MEMS performance keeps increasing, but there might be a technological barrier at some point. Finally, Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) and quantum technologies have made their first appearance and some products exist already. But the take-off of these technologies won’t happen before the 2030-2040 horizon. It is a matter of application maturity, technology maturity and integration delays. But eventually, it will happen, as history has shown multiple times. And for that, players active in the industry today need to position themselves, either by partnerships, by investing in R&D or by acquiring related companies.

Key features

Market projection for gyroscopes, accelerometers and IMUs in Munits through 2027
Market projection for gyroscopes, accelerometers and IMUs in $M through 2027
Gyroscope, accelerometer, and IMU ecosystem and player map
Market share by technology and system type
Application trends and volume breakdown for industrial, defense & aerospace and mobility end-markets
Technology trends for MEMS, fiber-optic gyroscopes (FOG), ring laser gyroscopes (RLG), hemispherical resonator gyroscopes (HRG), mechanical or dynamically tuned gyroscopes (DTG), and more

What’s new

Updated forecasts of volumes, market values and average selling prices (ASPs) of gyroscopes, accelerometers, inertial measurement units (IMU) and inertial navigation systems (INS)
Focus on emerging trends such as new space, robotic mobility, autonomy, logistics, assured position, navigation, and timing (A-PNT) and more
Focus on photonic integrated gyro technology

Product objectives

Ecosystem identification and analysis:
- Determination of the application range
- Technical market segmentation
  Market trends and forecasts
- Key players by market, and analysis
Analysis and description of markets and technologies involved:
- Detailed applications by market segment
- Major players worldwide
- Technology trends

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