How does the global microphone technology market choose a far-field voice interactive microphone?

Electronic enthusiasts eight o'clock early: the smart voice interactive market is gradually radiating to the suppliers of the industrial chain, the most direct benefit of which is the sound sensor device - microphone. In particular, the rise of microphone arrays will allow the sales of microphone manufacturers to double in the future. Prior to this, due to the decline in the growth rate of smartphones and tablets, the stocks of Lou, Gore and AAC have set a low in the middle of 2016.

The voice interaction situation in 2017 tends to be clear, and the investment institutions that focus on the research of intelligent voice interaction in the capital market are also significantly more. Then, it is necessary to have a deeper understanding of the microphone industry and the trend of technology.

As a popular name in the industry, the microphone is the transliteration name of the English Microphone. The domestic name is chaotic, sometimes it is simply called a microphone. Hong Kong and Taiwan are also called microphones and pickups. The Chinese academic name of the microphone is officially translated into a microphone. This is a transducer that converts sound into an electronic signal, that is, converting the acoustic signal into an electrical signal, which is exactly the same as the principle of photoelectric conversion.

The microphones in the consumer market are basically scalar microphones, which means that only a single physical quantity information - sound pressure - can be collected. What is the sound pressure? Sound pressure is the amount of pressure change caused by vibration when the sound wave passes through the medium. It can also be understood as the amplitude or intensity of the sound. The sound pressure is usually expressed by the letter "p", and the unit is Pascal (symbol Pa). The Pascal unit of sound pressure is inconvenient to remember (such as 20x10-6Pa~20Pa). Generally, the effective sound pressure is expressed by the scale of the scale relative to a reference value, that is, the sound pressure level, and the unit is decibel (symbol dB). ).

Human hearing thresholds for 1 kHz sounds are 20 x 10-6 Pa, which is often used as a reference for sound pressure levels. This may be difficult to understand, let's take a simple analogy: human breathing sound pressure is about 60x10-6Pa, sound pressure level is about 10dB, the sound pressure emitted by the rocket is about 4000Pa, the sound pressure level is about 165dB, the sound of the flash bomb The pressure is over 10,000 Pa and the sound pressure level is about 175 dB.

Analysis of these obscure numbers naturally leads to the parameters of the microphone. In fact, we are concerned with the ability of the microphone to restore the real sound. This is a difficult challenge because the sound and electricity conversion means distortion.

In order to describe the performance of the microphone, several performance metrics are critical, including sensitivity, directivity, frequency response, impedance, dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio, maximum sound pressure level (or AOP, acoustic overload point), and consistency. Sex and so on. These indicators are actually well understood and determine the performance of the microphone, and each indicator is very critical and indispensable. Of course, these indicators are really much simpler than the TS parameters of the speakers.

The microphone is a typical sensor industry, its technology iteration is very fast, and its appearance has undergone many changes. It is estimated that many people find it difficult to accurately find the microphone from the microphone array below.

Now the microphone array mainly uses digital MEMS microphones, and its longest size is only 3.76MM. MEMS microphones are also widely used sensor components in mobile phones. Generally, mobile phones have at least two such microphones. MEMS microphones are actually just technological improvements, and the principle still belongs to condenser microphones. Direct PK with MEMS microphone is the electret microphone.

These two microphones are the main force in the field of consumer electronics. For example, Amazon's Echo and the company's development board are mainly MEMS microphones. The development board of the University of Science and Technology is mainly an electret microphone. These two microphones have no substantial difference in terms of performance indicators. The performance of the electret microphone is higher, so the single-magn series of the Wisdom technology is also an electret microphone. However, the advantage of the MEMS microphone is the consistency comparison. Good, more suitable for microphone arrays for far-field voice interaction.

Capacitive microphones have another shape, which is a professional microphone commonly used in recording studios. This is essentially different from the microphones that our KTV sings. KTV microphones are generally dynamic microphones. The performance of this microphone is not as good as that of condenser microphones. The advantage is that it is suitable for vocal recording. The disadvantage is that the sensitivity is low. This is an advantage in KTV, because it can effectively avoid the whistling of the KTV environment. Of course, there are also band microphones and carbon microphones, which are not common, especially carbon microphones, which used to be used mainly in old-fashioned phones and are now largely eliminated. These kinds of microphones can be compared from the picture, sometimes it will be lamented that technology is always subverted.

Of course, the new microphones also include piezoelectric microphones, fiber-optic microphones, laser microphones, etc., and even TV screens or speakers (horns) can be used directly as microphones. In addition, the defense industry is also studying the deployment of more complex microphones such as vector microphones. In fact, the development of sound is similar to radar. Microphone array is also a stage of current technology development. The iteration of sensing technology is an important reason for technology and market iteration.

There is no doubt that MEMS is playing an increasingly important role in the semiconductor ecosystem, and its applications range from consumer electronics, automotive industry, industrial control to biomedical, aerospace and other fields, and are still expanding rapidly. With the growth of the consumer electronics market, consumer applications have become the main driving force in the MEMS sensor market. In 2014, the MEMS sensor market reached 13 billion US dollars. The largest consumer application scale reached 5.9 billion US dollars. By 2019, it is expected to exceed 25 billion US dollars, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.2%.

We compared the latest industry research data. From 2013 to the present, the market structure has changed without imaginary changes. On the contrary, MEMS manufacturers have entered a period of low-speed development in recent years. Fortunately, this year's voice interactive market is hot. Bringing imagination to the MEMS microphone market. The following is an overview of the market with data published on the Internet. It has been publicly reported for three years, and I believe that many of the voices of doubt have disappeared. These data do not represent the real situation, especially the current market conditions, but can be used as an important reference.

According to IHS statistics, the US company, Lous Electronics, was the world's largest supplier of packaged MEMS microphones (direct printed circuit board assembly) in 2013; the German company Infineon is a MEMS microphone bare crystal (supplied to MEMS microphones). The leading manufacturer of manufacturers. Lou's revenue accounted for 59% of the packaged MEMS microphone market, while Infineon's shipments accounted for 78% of the MEMS microphone bare crystal market.

Global packaged MEMS microphone supplier revenue rankings (in millions of US dollars)

Global MEMS microphone bare crystal supplier shipments list

In the packaged MEMS microphone market, the second-ranked supplier is AAC, with a revenue share of 13%; the third-ranked is Goertek, with a revenue share of 7%. Both AAC and Goer are Chinese manufacturers, and their business is heavily dependent on Apple and Samsung; AAC supplies one of the three high-performance MEMS microphones for the iPhone5, and also enters the iPhone5S; Gore is the main MEMS microphone for iPhone headsets. supplier. AAC's 2013 revenue growth of 8%, Goer began to supply high-performance microphones for mobile phones, revenue growth rate of 35% in 2013. Of course, after three years of market changes, the market share of these three companies has also changed quietly. Lou's continues to strengthen its leading position in the industry.

Ranked the fourth-largest packaged MEMS microphone supplier in the world is South Korea's BSE, whose performance comes from having Samsung's largest rival Samsung, the largest customer; BSE's 2013 revenue compared with 2012, the growth rate is more than 250%. The company that ranks fifth in the BSE after the BSE is the European industry STMicroelectronics (ST), whose MEMS microphone business continues to expand as it wins the iPad design.

Top 50 MEMS manufacturers in the world

Domestically, including Taiwan, there are also some microphone manufacturers. These manufacturers mainly rely on price to win, and the technical aspects have not established too high barriers. There are also some startup companies at home and abroad, such as the US Vesper MEMS, which uses piezoelectric microphones as the main technical features, but these technologies are themselves mastered by first-line manufacturers, but only considering market factors and no production line deployment. Therefore, the pressure on such startups when entering mass production is still very large, because the industry does need heavy assets and heavy investment.

The concept of far-field speech interaction is actually relative. We know that voice interaction involves a very complex technology chain, including core technologies such as acoustic processing, speech recognition, semantic understanding, and speech synthesis. Acoustic processing is mainly to simulate the human ear, to ensure that the machine can hear the human voice in the real environment, speech recognition is to translate the human voice heard into words, semantic understanding analyzes the meaning of these words, speech synthesis takes the machine The text to be expressed is translated into speech. Although these four technologies have developed independently, they cannot be separated in practice. At the same time, with the cooperation of other technologies, a complete chain of voice interaction can be formed.

Near-field speech recognition represented by Siri has been developed for more than 60 years, especially after deep learning with deep improvement after 2009, but as Zuckerberg said, when real products landed, we found users What is really needed is the far-field speech recognition similar to that advocated by Echo. Obviously, this is another new technology field, because the problem of the expansion of the pickup distance is not only the attenuation of the voice signal, but also the complex real environment and complex user habits.

The near-field speech recognition requirement must be low-noise, no reverberation, and close to the sound source. For example, the user always has to speak to the mobile phone to obtain the sound signal that meets the requirements of near-field speech recognition, and also requires the user to meet the standard pronunciation. Its recognition rate is likely to reach more than 95%. However, if the sound source is far away, and the real environment has a large amount of noise, multipath reflection and reverberation, the quality of the picked-up signal is degraded, which will seriously affect the speech recognition rate. In the same way, our human beings in the complex far-field environment are not as whispering as the two.

Usually, the near-field speech recognition engine in the far-field environment, if there is no support for acoustic processing, such as the adaptation of the microphone array technology, the real scene recognition rate is actually less than 60%. Moreover, since the real scene always has multiple sound sources and environmental noise superimposed, for example, there are often scenes of peripheral noise interference and multiple people talking at the same time, which further emphasizes the difficulty of speech recognition. Because the current speech recognition engine is a single-person recognition mode, it is impossible to deal with the problem of multi-person recognition at the same time.

Microphone arrays are currently the main solution to the above problems, but microphone arrays have many drawbacks, one of which is the higher requirements for hardware, including microphones and chip devices. Therefore, how to select a microphone for the microphone array is also a very careful and serious job. So, how do you choose a microphone for intelligent voice interaction?

Before we choose, we have a clear definition of the product, such as product sales, product life, product scenarios, etc. This is very important. Even if the performance indicators are completely consistent, it is necessary to consider the cost, production process, and supply capacity of the microphone supplier. Because the sensor manufacturers are still a production process, for example, many domestic microphone manufacturers actually buy foreign countries directly. Infineon's MEMS microphone solution is directly packaged and does not have technical research and development capabilities. Its production process and production scale are the main differences among many domestic manufacturers.

The second selection should focus on evaluating the performance of the microphone, including sensitivity, directivity, frequency response, impedance, dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio, maximum sound pressure level (or AOP, acoustic overload point), and consistency. , where directivity, signal-to-noise ratio, AOP, and consistency are the primary considerations for microphone arrays. In general, the directivity is also the following, there is no substantial difference between the major manufacturers. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and AOP are not too big for the three giants of Lou, Goer and Aurora. For example, the SNR is basically above 65dB, and the AOP is also greater than 120dB. The microphone quality above this parameter. It is currently more reliable and mature, and it is also the main supply model of the first-tier manufacturers. Consistency is a special consideration for microphone arrays, because MEMS microphones require soldering, which does not impose too demanding requirements on the soldering machine manufacturer. When the microphone can guarantee a certain performance after soldering, this is what the microphone manufacturer is. A huge test. Therefore, do not trust the technical indicators and commitments provided by the microphone manufacturers, and need to be certified to inspect their factories and production workshops and management.

The final selection must actually check the quality of the microphone, that is, the yield rate. From the experience of the company, when batch production, sometimes the batch is not the same, resulting in a large difference in microphones, especially some small and medium microphones. Supplier. What is particularly troublesome is that the replacement cost of MEMS is also very large. Once the patch is soldered, if a problem occurs, the batch of microphones will be scrapped. Of course, this is only a matter of time when the amount is large. The problem is not too critical when the equivalent is small.

However, it must be said that the market competition of MEMS has been very fierce. It has also been mentioned that this market has already produced giants including Lou, Gore, AAC, STM, Invense, etc., and it accounts for more than 80% of the market. Although the market is gradually transitioning from mobile phones and tablets to IOT devices, the current stock market is still mobile phones and tablets, and the amount of IOT is not too large. Then this raises two question marks: First, is this market a giant monopoly or a giant recession in the future? Second, is there any entrepreneurial opportunity in this market?

Although the emerging voice interactive market is a strong demand for microphone devices, will this kind of scene change lead to market changes in the giants? The future is really hard to say, only a few thoughts can be given for reference: First, voice The strong demand in the interactive market is the microphone array, not the components of the microphone, because for the microphone manufacturers, in addition to adding more customers, their customers have not changed substantially, and there is no higher technical demand. From this point of view, the reasons for the changes in the existing MEMS market structure are not sufficient.

Second, from a technical perspective, all technology vendors need to pay attention to the upgrade of technology iterations, such as the need for low-power, high-integration, vectorized microphones, if these first-line vendors do not track the progress of technology, when technology is subversive It is likely that it will be replaced, and suppliers of electret microphones are likely to face this serious problem in the short term. Of course, there are always some companies whose situation is rather embarrassing. In particular, some manufacturers choose to retreat when they encounter microphone technology and market challenges. Transformation often makes a transition, which is a huge challenge for sensor manufacturers.

So, there is no new entrepreneurial opportunity in the microphone industry? From the perspective of equal opportunity, there are many opportunities for entrepreneurship in any industry. The core lies in how to grasp and utilize. This is somewhat similar to the chip industry. The industry attribute of the microphone determines that it must be a model of heavy assets, including the scale investment of equipment and production lines. In addition, cost control, production line management and processing technology are also core elements. In fact, every aspect of technology is a great investment.

In addition, there are ideal manufacturers that should adhere to the technology-driven route. For example, AAC Technologies and Goer Acoustics have purchased Infineon's MEMS and ASIC chips at the beginning, and then sold them to customers for such long-term technology accumulation. With the acquisition, the two companies have gradually mastered MEMS microphone technology. So for other manufacturers, whether this road can be copied or surpassed, or simply transformed, this is a very painful process.

The future market space of MEMS microphones is bound to be greater, and its technical requirements will be higher and higher. Under the circumstances that the giants have already established, how can emerging startups seize the opportunity to break through or share cakes? This is a painful test. Whether it is to withstand the pressure to face competition, or to retreat into other markets, this is a real problem that is often placed in front of all entrepreneurs.

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