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A multitude of uses bring success to the uncooled IR imaging market.
UNCOOLED IR IMAGERS ARE ON THEIR WAY TO MULTIPLE USES
Over the past ten years, the uncooled infrared (IR) imaging market has been driven primarily by defense applications, then by commercial ones. Currently, growth comes through thermography, surveillance, personal vision systems (PVS) and security markets. But the high cost of the technology has restrained the use of microbolometers to niche/medium volume applications. The cost/performance ratio has not yet opened the way to consumer applications.
However, this is changing. Manufacturing costs are decreasing, with the introduction of new manufacturing processes such as wafer level optics, wafer level packaging, and silicon lenses. This, coupled with a growing public awareness for the benefits for infrared vision, is opening new doors. One example is the 2016 commercial success of FLIR’s CATS60, the first smartphone with infrared vision capability.
2016 was a good year for the microbolometer market. There were almost 900,000 uncooled IR camera shipments, worth $2.7B in revenues thanks to a dynamic commercial market and continued growth for military applications. Many commercial applications drove this growth, including thermography, surveillance, PVS and firefighting. In 2022, we estimate there will be 1.7M units shipped.
Thermography is still the leading commercial market by far, in both value and volume. We estimate that there will be 500,000 thermography units shipped annually by 2022. As camera prices continue to fall, with several new products below $1000, sales are growing.
Surveillance is another interesting market. Until recently, thermal cameras have primarily been used in high-end surveillance for critical and government infrastructure. New municipal and commercial applications with lower price points are now arising, including traffic, parking, power stations and photovoltaic planning. We estimate this market will grow at almost 17% over 2017-2022 to reach 300,000 units by 2022.