1) MagnaChip Announces Initiative to Develop Next–Generation Display Features in Mobile and Handheld Consumer Electronics
Strategic Partnerships with Industry Leaders to Combine Best-in-Class OLED Display with Touch, Stylus and Fingerprint IC Technologies to Create Innovative and Lower–Cost Designs
SEOUL, South Korea and SAN JOSE, Calif., April 9, 2019 — MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (“MagnaChip” or the “Company”) (NYSE: MX), a designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, announced today a new initiative to partner with companies in the development of next-generation display features of smartphones and other mobile or handheld consumer electronics devices. MagnaChip intends to develop individual strategic partnerships with leading manufacturers of touch, stylus, fingerprint technologies, and associated OLED display technologies.
Each of these companies will collaborate with MagnaChip to develop and standardize innovative human-interface solutions based upon smart touch, stylus and fingerprint technologies that are suitable for MagnaChip’s industry leading OLED display driver integrated circuits (DDIC). The goal in each instance will be to improve the functionality of OLED displays on end user devices. Further, there will be a specified collaboration in shared intellectual property that will extend into new applications, for instance in the IoT and automotive sectors.
MagnaChip is the leading independent provider of OLED DDICs, and benefits from long relationships with the top two display panel makers in the world. Further, more than a dozen smartphone OEMs currently use MagnaChip’s OLED DDICs in their smartphone lineups. Over the past 10 years, MagnaChip has shipped more than 400 million OLED DDICs and developed a broad portfolio of patents related to the design and manufacturing of OLED display drivers.
With various market forecasts predicting OLED smartphones to account for more than 50 percent of all smartphones by 2021, the initiative has the potential to expand market-related business opportunities for each member, benefit consumers by offering “best-of-class” display features, and to make OLED the display technology of choice for screens in a wide range of consumer electronics products.
“The series of strategic ecosystem partnerships will create a new de facto OLED display ecosystem that can help us better identify customer needs and develop best-in-class products,” said YJ Kim, Chief Executive Officer of MagnaChip. “Further, by working together, we can achieve innovative and high performance OLED platform solutions, shorten the OLED platform validation cycle, hence reduce “design-in” costs for smartphone and other mobile solutions.”
2) MagnaChip and ELAN Microelectronics Announce Partnership to Expand OLED Display Capabilities for Next-Generation Applications
MagnaChip’s New Industry Initiative Targets Applications in Smartphones and Mobile Devices and Computing, Industrial and Automotive Segments
SEOUL, South Korea and SAN JOSE, Calif., April 9, 2019 — MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (“MagnaChip” or the “Company”) (NYSE: MX), a designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, and ELAN Microelectronics Corp. (TWSE:ELAN), an industry leader in the development of Smart Human Machine Interface (HMI) applications, including capacitive touchscreen controllers, capacitive trackpads, and fingerprint sensors, today announced a partnershipto expand the capabilities of OLED displays for a wide variety of next-generation consumer, communication, computing and industrial products, as well as for automotive displays.
The partnership seeks to build upon the recent growth and market penetration of OLED displays in areas such as smartphones, mobile devices, tablets and automotive applications, ranging from navigation and infotainment screens to brake light and interior lighting systems. OLED technology enables screens to display rich and highly saturated colors while emitting low power consumption. Flexible OLED display driver ICs (DDIC) enable curved screens for smartphones, tablets and other devices.
Further, customer demand for stylus input on screens continues to grow and MagnaChip, as the world’s largest independent volume provider of OLED DDIC components, with more than 400 million units shipped, will collaborate in seeking to bring ELAN’s stylus technologies to both rigid and flexible OLED Displays through this partnership. Currently, ELAN supports pen protocols defined by Microsoft, Wacom, and Huawei and has enabled stylus features on smartphones, tablets, and Notebook PCs for Out-Cell, On-Cell and In-Cell LCDs. MagnaChip believes it will enhance its leadership position in OLED DDIC by co-developing with ELAN new protocols with advanced features for the future.
Specifically, MagnaChip expects the collaboration with ELAN to improve its OLED DDIC technologies for next-generation applications by supporting ELAN’s development of de facto industry standard stylus solutions optimized for its OLED display drivers.
“By working with MagnaChip we believe we can develop optimized OLED display solutions that can become de-facto industry standards,” said I. H. Yeh, Chairman and CEO of ELAN Microelectronics. “OLED displays across multiple product sectors have shown impressive growth in recent years and we believe integrating our advanced fingerprint and touch IC technology with OLED DDIC technology will create compelling benefits for consumer and industrial product manufacturers. It is my honor that MagnaChip, the largest independent supplier of OLED DDIC, and ELAN, the leader in stylus touch controllers, can collaborate to bring advanced stylus features to the world of OLED.”
“By working with industry leaders such as ELAN, our goal is to create combined hardware offerings that provide industry leading product features and benefits for our customers,” said YJ Kim, CEO of MagnaChip Semiconductor. “And by collaborating with other industry leaders as part of our broader industry initiative, we believe MagnaChip can help accelerate product innovation, shorten time to market, and provide compelling OLED display solutions to the consumer, communications, computing, industrial and automotive markets.”
