Designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, MagnaChip Semiconductor, has announced 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 ten 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% 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.”
