Smartphone sensors to cross 10 billion marks in 2020: Counterpoint

According to a new report by research firm Counterpoint, more than 6 billion sensors were shipped within smartphones in 2017 and it is estimated to cross the 10 billion mark in 2020.

"Sensors such as Accelerometer, Compass, Gyroscope, and Ambient Light Sensors (ALS) have become ubiquitous across smartphones even down to a sub-$50 category," Pavel Naiya, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research, said in a statement.

"These sensors have been the key components to make a phone smarter carving out meaningful use-cases from navigation, gaming, augmented reality to preserving battery life and much more," he added.

"Biometrics base sensors in smartphones have seen greater adoption in the last few years. For example, more than a billion smartphones to be shipped in 2018 will sport a fingerprint sensor and close to 400 million will feature some form of face unlock biometric sensor solution," Naiya further added.

The report said that, sensor Fusion platforms are finally gaining popularity and getting adopted by different OEM players beyond smartphones.

As MEMS technology becomes more advanced, less expensive and miniaturized, the microcontroller driven software platform helps to fuse the multiple sensor data to provide more accurate and contextual output. For example, combining accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope to accurately predict position in the physical world.

Commenting on the potential for Sensor Fusion solutions, Research Director Neil Shah, said, "Sensor Fusion platform adoption will breathe more life into smartphones and emerging categories such as smartwatches, AR/VR devices, automotive and other IoT enterprise solutions. The sensor fusion capabilities in a device will help OEMs craft newer experiences by detecting context, emotion based on the different physiological variable states from the sensor data.

He, added, "Sensor Fusion platform is powerful not only for medical applications to detect muscle contraction or sweat or body temperature or heart rate variation but also for non-medical applications from immersive gaming to accurate indoor navigation to preventing car accidents monitoring the driver. The adoption of sensor fusion is what will make devices actually smarter as it's all about data and drawing out contextual awareness from it."