IPhone users may not know exactly what an accelerometer is.They're just wowed by some of the cool things an accelerometer lets them do. It's the component that changes the screen from portrait to landscape mode when the phone is turned on its side, or lets you shake the device to simulate rolling dice. It even allows you to turn the new iPhone 3GS into a compass.
Thanks to the iPhone and now such rival devices as the Palm Pre, the iSuppli research firm predicts that a full one-third of mobile phones will use accelerometers by 2010, up from one in five this year and one in 11 in 2008.
"With their capability to detect and measure motion, accelerometers are the critical enablers of these features, which are an essential element of what makes these smart phones so popular," said iSuppli principal analyst Jérémie Bouchard in a release issued today. "These capabilites are now spreading beyond smart phones to other types of handsets."
Among top mobile phone companies, iSuppli says 38% of new Nokia handsets have integrated these sensors since the beginning of the year, as have 18 of 19 Sony Ericsson models introduced so far in 2009.
Driven in part by the rapid rise in acceleromter adoption, iSuppli expects sales of all kinds of "microelectromechanical" sensors or MEMs for mobiles phones to jump from about $460.9 million in 2008 to $1.6 billion in 2013.
By Ed Baig
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