I’ve used a lot of different sensors for random purposes and it’s almost always the same few companies (or a knockoff of them) at each the price point. Buildin

I’ve used a lot of different sensors for random purposes and it’s almost always the same few companies (or a knockoff of them) at each the price point. Building a sensor-on-ic is more comparable to the process that pharmaceutical companies go through in their R&D rather than traditional logic chip makers. It’s a lot of experimenting, use of non-standard materials, and pushing fabrication techniques to their limits. They don’t have to disclose how it’s made in the same way as pharmaceutical companies are required to, however, which means they have a monopoly on the tech until someone decaps the IC and reverse engineers it.