Study finds strong sales of low-cost uncooled infrared cameras in commercial markets

Lyon, France –– Yole Développement has announced the release of its report “Uncooled Infrared Imaging: Commercial & Military Applications." Initially developed for the military market by US defense companies, infrared (IR) uncooled cameras are now widely used in many commercial applications. This report provides an overview of all the infrared technologies currently commercialized focused on uncooled Long Wave Infrared/thermal detection with microbolometers. Market forecasts until 2017 with in-depth analysis of commercial and military markets is provided, along with a description of the main active players and the latest technological evolutions and future trends.

This technology & market analysis will be presented during an Editorial Webcast on June 26 at 08:00 AM PDT; To discover the program, visit the website I-micronews.com, webcasts section - Free registration.

Sales will grow from 320,000 in 2011 to 1.1 m units in 2017

Commercial business is expanding at a high rate and is driven by three main markets:

• Thermography market: still the largest commercial market, sales have boomed in 2011. Increasing competition from new entrants from the power tool market e.g. DeWALT, Milwaukee Tools will make camera price drop below $1,000 and accelerate thermal imaging adoption by new categories of users (electricians, contractors…).
• Automotive market: concentrated in only one supplier, Autoliv, but has increased sales by + 30% in volume in 2011. It is expected that IR cameras sales for automotive will exceed 300,000 units in 2017, but installation rate in cars will remain below 1% in the long term.
• Surveillance becomes a strategic market and focuses the attention of all IR supply chain players: detector, core, and camera manufacturers. Major new entrants from visible CCTV, and military markets have positioned on that growing business and have started a price war.

Commercial market will compensate for the decline of military market mainly occupied by U.S. companies.

Cost reduction increasing in 2011 - 2012

Cost driven price reduction (-15% / year) is rapidly broadening the use of Infrared cameras in many commercial markets, particularly in thermography and surveillance markets. In thermography, ultra-low end cameras have been introduced with success by FLIR in 2010, and Dewalt will introduce a new model in 2012 at the breakthrough price of $999. In surveillance, FLIR and Axis are competing heavily, and DRS introduced a middle end camera at the price of $2,000 in 2012.

Price decrease is driving R&D developments

Wafer Level Packaging is confirmed as a significant trend to further reduce detector cost and will be a strategic issue for new players to successfully enter the market. FLIR started to use WLP in 2011, and soon other players will follow. (Raytheon, Sensonor, NEC…). Pixel size miniaturization is a key trend to further increase the resolution of the imager and decrease the cost of the optics. In 2012, 17 μm pixel pitch has become a standard in new product release, approaching the 12 μm physical limit. While the size of the pixel decreases, sensitivity of new sensors increases to approach 30 mK (SCD, ULIS). That evolution will enable broader microbolometer adoption to include high performance applications so far exclusively targeted by cooled IR detectors. The increasing trend toward multispectral imaging at end-user level has driven several microbolometer developments. Image fusion aiming at combining several spectral bands (MWIR, LWIR, Visible…). to increase system performance and added functionalities to thermal camera users. SCD has paved the way for dual-band imaging by releasing a wide band imager realizing on-chip fusion of LWIR & MWIR.