MEMS microphone application becomes the latest trend in e-cigarettes in 2024

Microphone is one of the key components of electronic cigarettes, which plays a pivotal role in the experience of using electronic cigarettes. In the first few years, electronic cigarettes use mostly traditional electret microphone heads, but with the growing involution of the e-cigarette market and consumers' increasing demands for product experience, MEMS microphone heads have gradually become a better choice for e-cigarette manufacturers.

Compared with electret microphone heads, MEMS microphone heads have been comprehensively upgraded in terms of high temperature resistance, water and oil resistance, anti-volatility, and start-up negative pressure consistency, solving the common pain points of electret microphone heads. From the production point of view, MEMS microphone head also has advantages in production yield, consistency and other aspects.

According to industry insiders, the application of MEMS microphone heads on e-cigarettes in 2024 has made a major breakthrough and become the latest trend in e-cigarette products. At present, many head and small and medium-sized e-cigarette manufacturers have begun to apply MEMS microphone head to replace electret microphone head on a large scale, and it is expected that by the second half of 2024, more than 50% coverage of MEMS microphone head will be realized in the whole e-cigarette industry.

Why electronic cigarette manufacturers have chosen MEMS microphone program? In addition to more excellent performance, there are two reasons:

1) Price reduction. With the progress of the process and larger-scale mass production applications, the cost of MEMS integrated solutions has been lower than traditional ECM electret solutions;

(2) After a head e-cigarette enterprise applied MEMS program on a large scale, it did the whole machine overseas shipment after-sales comparison data, and the results showed that the return rate of the same batch of products with ECM electret microphone head was about 3%/4 months, while the return rate with MEMS microphone head was below 0.7%/4 months. The return and exchange rate is significantly reduced, which makes this head of electronic cigarette companies firmly this year's new project to fully switch to MEMS microphone head.

What manufacturers have started to apply MEMS microphone. According to our understanding, the global e-cigarette leader Love Miracle has introduced MEMS microphone in many of its product series, the company's elfbar, lostmary brand in a number of important markets around the world to sit in the lead; e-cigarette head manufacturers Kikkner has realized every month ten million MEMS shipments; the well-known e-cigarette brand SMOK has also been MEMS microphone application to the main shipments of products, the brand has always been at the forefront of product innovation. The brand has always been at the forefront of product innovation. In addition, several head manufacturers, such as McWell, Hoyuan, Jiho Technology, Dometic, Joly Energy, Hanqingda, Bodi, etc., have also started to gradually replace the traditional electret microphone. The current large-scale MEMS application of several industry head enterprises also means that the utilization rate of MEMS in the e-cigarette industry can quickly reach more than 20%!

Industry sources revealed that Kirchner this year in a large number of applications of MEMS microphone, briefly encountered a small batch of MEMS head of enterprise supply quality problems, but quickly resolved and resumed the same week a large number of supplies.

At present, the supply chain technology related to electronic cigarettes is mainly in the hands of Chinese enterprises, electronic cigarette MEMS microphone technology is no exception. Domestic manufacturers such as Minxin Micro, Daimicro Semiconductor, Gore Micro, AAC, etc. are mainly involved in the development of MEMS microphone for e-cigarettes.

Among them, Minxin Micro started from acoustic MEMS, optimistic about the application of MEMS solutions in the field of electronic cigarettes, and gradually shifted its focus to the electronic cigarette industry. The company's products are MEMS air microphone, signal microphone, has realized large-scale shipments in Kirchner, Hepatic (SMOK programmers) and other customers, monthly shipments have reached ten million, and is still rising. Minxin's sales model is the agent shipments, the agent is responsible for their own customers' technical services.

Another MEMS head manufacturers, big micro semiconductor, focusing only on the application of MEMS in the e-cigarette industry R & D, launched a MEMS empty microphone, signal microphone, integrated power microphone product matrix, the company's power microphone is the industry's only through a number of head of the e-cigarette manufacturers reliability testing of the MEMS microphone head products, and has achieved large-scale shipments. Recently, the big micro also launched the first CBD dedicated MEMS integrated power microphone, between (2.0-2.8) volts to achieve stable constant voltage output, and built-in OVP; and the minimum load 0.6 ohms can be directly achieved 21 watts of stable output of the integrated power microphone, also built-in OVP. and, the big micro integrated power microphone can be communicated with the MCU to achieve the cost of the program has a clear advantage. It is reported that many head manufacturers, such as Hoyuan, Kirchner, Jihar, Skoal, Dometic, Weimar, Bodhi and so on, have begun to apply the big micro MEMS microphone. Big Micro is a direct sales model, and has set up a sales and customer service team in Shenzhen.

AAC and Gore are both acoustic MEMS giants and have also launched e-cigarette MEMS microphone head products. However, they are cautious about the e-cigarette industry and have not sustained their efforts. It is believed that MEMS will also launch new product series after large-scale application in the e-cigarette industry.