Global and China Voice Coil Motor (VCM) Industry Report, 2019-2025

VCM (voice circle motor or voice coil actuator), a part for smartphone camera, shares around 6% of smartphone camera industry chain value.

Globally, popularity of smartphones such as those with multiple cameras conduces to the robust demand for smartphone VCMs. In 2018, roughly 1,910.7 million VCMs were consumed worldwide, including 564 million units, or 29.5% of the global total used by China.

VCM is divided into open-loop motor, closed-loop motor, center motor, optical image stabilization (OIS) motor, and OIS + close-loop six-axis motor, among which open-loop motor is used most widely and takes a lion’s share in the market. OIS motors that prevail in the increasingly popular high-end smartphones, however, see a rising share in global VCM shipments, virtually 27.6% in 2018.

Among the over 100 VCM vendors worldwide, most are from Japan, South Korea, and China, of which Japanese giants, typically ALPS, Mitsumi and TDK, command over 40% of the global market with state-of-the-art technologies and strong manufacturing capacity.

In 2018, Alps, Mitsumi, and TDK swept a combined 40.6% shares in the global VCM market, closely followed by SEMCO, Jahwa, Hozel, and ZET that together made up 33.5%. Overall, Chinese peers hold the growing shares.

In the forthcoming years, global and Chinese VCM industries have trends as follows:

• Prevalence of dual-, triple- and quad-camera smartphones invigorates VCM industry: dual-camera smartphones get popular broadly and triple- and quad-camera ones already become available on market. Wider use of multi-camera smartphones leaves the VCM industry with broad space for development. As estimated, 3,940.1 million VCMs will be consumed globally in 2025, 1,189 million units of which will be used by China.
• OIS motor is gaining ground: having been a core technology for high precision micro cameras used in smart mobile devices, autofocus will tend to be faster, enable smaller focus modules and lower power consumption and offer better user experience on stability; VCM evolving from traditional shrapnel motor to closed-loop motor to OIS motor will be a solution to blurry pictures and make photographing and video recording more stable.
• Chinese VCMs will take bigger shares in the global market: in recent years Chinese smartphones have become more widespread around the globe. Chinese smartphone brands that grabbed a record share of 50% in 2018, are expected to share a combined 60% of the global market in 2019. They have started to use China-made VCMs massively. Chinese VCMs outperforming their foreign counterparts in cost, service, and production, will thus scramble for more of the market.

Global and China Voice Circle Motor (VCM) Industry Report, 2019-2025 highlights the following:

• Global VCM industry (development status, market structure, competitive pattern, and development trends)
• China VCM industry (development status, policy and technology, and competitive pattern)
• Upstream VCM sectors (non-ferrous metal, plastic granule, etc.) and downstream VCM sectors (camera module, smartphone, etc.)
• 8 global and 12 Chinese VCM vendors (operation, VCM business, etc.).