Christmas goes digital: why mini Bosch components will feature in so many gifts this Christmas

Reutlingen, Germany – This year once again, the gifts under the Christmas tree will be emitting beeps, buzzes, and radio waves: according to Bitkom, some 70 percent of Germans will be giving digital gifts. This could be a smart watch, a game console, or of course a cell phone. This also means that Bosch will figure prominently under people’s Christmas trees, even though few may realize it. There’s at least one Bosch MEMS sensor in more than half the smartphones on the planet, and five of them on average in every new car. And there are millions more in drones, game consoles, fitness wristbands, and vacuum-cleaning robots. Bosch has produced more than ten billion of these miniature sensors in its wafer fab at Reutlingen, 40 kilometers south of Stuttgart, since 1995. “MEMS sensors are the building blocks of the connected world. They endow everyday objects with sensory perception and connect them with the internet,” says Jens Fabrowsky, member of the executive management of the Automotive Electronics division at Robert Bosch GmbH. With the number of connected devices rising fast – Gartner expects the global count to come to 20 billion by 2020 – MEMS sensors are sure to become chip-sized superheroes that we simply cannot do without.