A new hat has been tossed into the MEMS ring: Maxim. You may be familiar with them as an analog name, or you might be familiar with Sensor Dynamics. Which was bought by Maxim, and which is now the source of Maxim’s first announcement: a gyroscope aimed at the consumer market. (Read phones and tablets.)

Why a gyroscope? Well, partly because accelerometers have become too inexpensive to be interesting on their own. And because they’re hard: as they said in a conversation I had with them, “get it right and the rest is easy.”

While we’ve noted that gyroscopes have taken longer to gain traction than accelerometers, Maxim sees indoor navigation and optical image stabilization (OIS) as fertile ground for driving gyro usage.

And they’re doing it all themselves. While an accelerometer wasn’t their first device, they will be including one in a 9-axis combo in the future – which means they’re also tackling magnetics. And they say they’ll have a couple more devices specifically aimed at the OIS market shortly.

You can find out more about their initial product in their release…