TowerJazz and TLi targeting worldwide mobile phone market

TLI has developed an acceleration sensor control IC and proximity illumination sensor IC based on TowerJazz’s advanced 0.18um CMOS technology which enables TLi to provide local offerings to mobile phone suppliers in Korea where the market leaders are located. As of 2012, the worldwide mobile phone market was 1.7 billion dollar and 43% of this was attributed to smart phones with acceleration sensor control ICs and proximity and illumination sensor ICs. The portion of smart phones with these ICs is expected to grow steadily and TLi is targeting this fast growing market with two of its products utilizing TowerJazz’s process. A mass production is expected to start in Q3, 2013. The acceleration sensor market is mostly dominated by a few major foreign companies, however in January of this year, TLi succeeded in developing an acceleration sensor control IC and a proximity illumination sensor IC in Korea. These products are the first released from the very close collaboration between TowerJazz and TLi. By utilizing the features of TowerJazz’s 0.18um CMOS process, TLi realized accurate modeling as well as flash memory without mask adder for its acceleration sensor control IC and succeeded in realizing the sensing block without expensive color filtering for its proximity illumination sensor IC, the companies write in a statement. “We have been very pleased with our collaboration on these exciting products which has enabled us to provide local offerings to Korean mobile phone suppliers that are expected to be the most cost effective solutions in this market. This is the result of our close discussions with TowerJazz to utilize the advanced features of their 0.18 CMOS process. Also, these products showed full functionality from first silicon,” said Soonwon Hong, Vice President of TLi. “Korea is an important region for technical and manufacturing innovation and we are very excited to work with a leading-edge partner such as TLi to enable localization of their specialized sensor ICs,” said Michael Song, VP of Sales and President of TowerJazz Korea. “TLi has trusted us to co-develop and bring to market their latest products and we are pleased with the progress we have made in this region which is home to many leading semiconductor companies.”