HyT Capital Portfolio | The Domestic Disruptor of MEMS Oscillators
In 2013, SiTime launched its first 32kHz MEMS oscillator — the SiT15xx series. According to reports, this product, designed for smart terminal applications, was able to overcome many of the limitations of traditional quartz oscillators, delivering significant improvements in size, power consumption, reliability, and lifespan. Rajesh Vashist, then CEO of SiTime, said: "SiTime's breakthrough silicon MEMS and analog technology provides an innovative timing solution that surpasses decades of development in the quartz industry." In the years that followed, SiTime advanced steadily and eventually went public in 2019. This achievement was largely attributed to the SiT15xx series. Some industry insiders even believe that SiTime's IPO was built on the back of this wildly successful chip series.
Recently, with Apple's release of the iPhone 16e, this company has once again been thrust into the spotlight. Noted analysis firm TechInsights has discovered through teardown that the iPhone 16e is the first in the smartphone industry to introduce MEMS oscillators, and it is expected that such oscillators will continue to be adopted in future products. This is bound to drive strong growth in the performance of this US-based chip company.
Lei Yongqing, founder of local MEMS oscillator startup MaiStar, has stated outright: "MEMS oscillators will replace quartz oscillators in the future." As one of the few players in this domestic sector, MaiStar is also playing an important role.
MEMS Oscillators: An Irresistible Trend
Looking back at the history of oscillators, it can be traced to 1880, when the Curie brothers, while studying quartz crystals, discovered that applying mechanical stress to the crystal generated a shift in electric charge. This led them to propose the concept of the piezoelectric effect.
In the decades that followed, countless pioneers devoted themselves to the study of quartz oscillators, making this product an indispensable component in electronic devices. Our electronic systems — including various types of processors — all require a periodic pulse signal, and that is where quartz oscillators come into play. However, as electronic devices become increasingly miniaturized and artificial intelligence rises rapidly, traditional quartz oscillators are struggling to keep up with these evolving demands.
Lei Yongqing cited the example of today's hot AI applications. With the rapid development of various large models, AI data centers using advanced GPUs, DPUs, and network switching chips are seeing faster and faster data transmission and exchange rates between server boards. Only high-precision, low-jitter synchronous clocks can ensure the accuracy of data transmission and exchange; otherwise, model training failures can occur. Many internationally renowned AI companies have unanimously adopted high-frequency, high-precision, and low-jitter MEMS clocks in their server boards and network switches. In the AI server and network switch sector, MEMS clock solutions save over 80% in volume. They also outperform traditional solutions in power consumption and performance. In terms of specific performance, MEMS solutions maintain stable performance even in the face of temperature variations and vibration in server environments, making MEMS oscillators increasingly indispensable.
"Today's smart vehicles, with their growing levels of intelligence, are also using many quartz oscillators — roughly 30 per vehicle. These oscillators must pass stringent automotive-grade chip qualification tests, facing unprecedented reliability challenges. Quartz oscillators undergo AEC-Q200 certification, while automotive-grade MEMS oscillators must pass the more stringent AEC-Q100 certification," said Lei Yongqing. Leading global new energy vehicle manufacturers are already using automotive-grade MEMS clock products on a large scale.
He also pointed out that applications such as smartphones and wearable devices, with their stringent requirements for internal size and power consumption, are increasingly turning to MEMS oscillators that offer miniaturization, high precision, vibration resistance, and shock resistance. Many major international smart terminal manufacturers are adopting smaller, higher-precision, and lower-power MEMS oscillators in products such as AR/VR headsets, smartwatches, bands, and rings.
Taking the iPhone 16e as an example again, according to TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, this device is the first to integrate Apple's self-developed C1 baseband. Unlike Qualcomm's modem design, which relies on three quartz crystal oscillators (32kHz, 24MHz, and 76.8MHz), Apple's own modem now uses only one 24MHz quartz crystal oscillator, while the other two (32kHz and 76.8MHz) are replaced by SiTime's MEMS oscillators. In the future, Apple plans to fully replace quartz oscillators with MEMS oscillators. There is no doubt that Apple is driving a profound transformation in the clock industry.
Industry analysts believe that MEMS oscillators give smartphones a leading edge in satellite communications, navigation, and positioning, while also enabling better battery life.
SiTime also summarized in its blog post that, compared to traditional quartz oscillators, MEMS oscillators offer unparalleled advantages in frequency stability and accuracy, reliability and long-term performance, compactness, shock resistance, and seamless integration with modern semiconductor packaging. Moreover, their native silicon-to-silicon compatibility eliminates the need for quartz compensation circuits and tuning, thereby simplifying circuit design and optimizing manufacturing scalability. In addition, cost and power advantages, supply chain advantages, and manufacturing efficiency have made MEMS oscillators increasingly popular among developers.
Precisely because MEMS oscillators are so popular, SiTime's performance has steadily risen over the past few years. According to Ming-Chi Kuo's projections, from 2025 to 2027, Apple alone will contribute $40 million, $110 million, and $200 million to SiTime's revenue. Considering contributions from other customers, SiTime's growth potential is remarkable.
Lei Yongqing also revealed that the domestic MEMS oscillator market is almost exclusively monopolized by SiTime. Apart from them, only Microchip offers limited alternatives. "In BeiDou navigation modules, due to strict size constraints, only MEMS oscillators can be used. In the past, besides SiTime, they had no other choice," Lei Yongqing cited as an example.
Under these circumstances, a local MEMS oscillator supplier becomes critically important. Founded in 2021, MaiStar has seized the opportunity to rise.
MaiStar: The Local Disruptor
According to available information, Shenzhen-based MaiStar Microelectronics has developed over a hundred patented technologies, with core patents covering ASIC, MEMS, packaging, and finished products. The MEMS oscillators independently developed and launched by the company have filled a gap in China's MEMS oscillator technology and broken the technological monopoly long held by foreign players.
When asked how they were able to achieve this, Lei Yongqing repeatedly emphasized: "Both courage and luck are important — neither can be missing!"
He said that at the time of starting the business, although MEMS oscillators had been around for many years, they still had not entered the "mainstream." That is to say, they had not yet made their way into massive markets like smartphones, and AI had not yet become a sensation. So any talk of foresight would be hindsight. The reason he chose this sector was, first, because he had been deeply engaged in this industry for many years and was familiar with market demands and customers. Second, when he started the company, he wanted to choose a direction that had high barriers and had not yet seen breakthroughs in China. MEMS oscillators became his choice.
Just two years after its founding, MaiStar released its first product, the MST8011, a programmable MHz MEMS XO, and has since accumulated over 100 customers. According to reports, the company is now launching low-power, small-size, high-precision 32.768kHz MEMS TCXOs. Upon release, this series has attracted significant attention, with various smart terminal and IoT customers rushing to evaluate and adopt them.
When users adopt the above MEMS oscillators, in the AI terminal space, their high stability ensures that multi-sensor data remains highly synchronized with the time axis, while vibration resistance is 50 times higher than quartz, ensuring reliable operation in complex environments. In smart wearables, chip-scale packaging (1.5×0.8mm CSP) saves 85% in area, while programmable swing technology reduces power consumption by 30% to 50%, extending battery life. Satellite navigation modules benefit from fast positioning capability (TTFF optimization) and shock resistance exceeding 30,000g, ensuring timing accuracy in extreme environments. In IoT and power sector applications, ±5ppm high precision reduces network synchronization overhead and improves synchronization and timing accuracy.
Lei Yongqing said that compared to traditional quartz crystals and crystal oscillators, the 32.768kHz series MEMS oscillators offer clear advantages in small size, high precision, and low power consumption. In the global wave of AI terminal device intelligence, the 32.768kHz series MEMS oscillators, with their unique technical advantages, are providing precise clock frequencies to core processors. This type of oscillator is also reshaping the performance boundaries of AR glasses, smartphones, smart wearables, smart home devices, and in-vehicle intelligent terminals.
According to Lei Yongqing, achieving such results in just a few years is the result of the team's persistence.
MEMS oscillator technology has been around for over two decades. Many domestic research institutions and university teams have been conducting cutting-edge exploration and research in the MEMS oscillator field, and some companies have also collaborated with university teams to pursue commercialization. When asked about the difficulties in R&D and industrialization of MEMS oscillators, Lei Yongqing offered the following views:
First, MEMS oscillator R&D is a complex systematic effort. MEMS resonator development, ASIC development, packaging development, and production testing equipment development are all interdependent and indispensable. The development process often encounters coupled technical challenges. Moreover, these four links must be closely interconnected — if any one link fails, the entire product effort falls apart.
Second, the development cycle for the MEMS resonator, the core component of MEMS oscillators, is long and carries high risk. MEMS resonator development requires customizing processes with the foundry and demands extremely high process precision. Wafer costs are high, and the turnaround time is long. This causes many to stumble at the "process qualification" stage.
Furthermore, even after process qualification is achieved, there are numerous challenges in ensuring consistency across wafer batches and moving from "process qualification" to "mass production." If wafer yields are low and cannot be improved in the short term, large-scale commercial deployment becomes impossible.
"MaiStar happened to achieve all of the above, which enabled the company to launch these products," said Lei Yongqing. "We are the only domestic company capable of delivering comparable products to US counterparts at scale," he added. He also pointed out that MaiStar consistently pursues differentiation, while also keeping costs lower than comparable US products.
"We want to make MEMS oscillators that all Chinese people can afford," Lei Yongqing emphasized.
Leading a New Wave of Substitution
With the support of these leading products, MaiStar has already gained over 100 customers and has shipped a significant number of MEMS oscillator products. Now, with the adoption of MEMS oscillators in the iPhone 16e, MaiStar is stepping up its efforts to promote these products among smartphone and wearable device customers.
When discussing future development, Lei Yongqing firmly believes that MEMS oscillators will be a brand-new alternative solution — whether from the perspective of technological and product advancement, or from the market's need for a second supplier to reduce dependency.
He explained that MEMS oscillators use semiconductor materials, MEMS processes, and semiconductor packaging technologies, with short manufacturing process flows and a high degree of automation. As wafer fabs continue to upgrade and iterate, costs can be further reduced.
In 2023, Yole forecast that the MEMS clock market would reach $1.6 billion by 2027. "I believe that in the future, oscillators and various standalone clock chips will converge. MEMS clocks have enormous market potential. US companies have already launched many high-performance clock generators and jitter-attenuating clock chips based on MEMS technology. These products offer clear advantages in cost-effectiveness, size, and power consumption over traditional clock solutions. Many leading international smart terminal companies, AI companies, and new energy vehicle manufacturers are adopting higher-integration MEMS clock chips," Lei Yongqing concluded.
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