The future of the touch chip market is here!

Electronic enthusiasts in October "hot touch technology special issue " hot download, how can you lack!

Touch technology has become the fastest changing and the most cutting-edge product differentiated creative design technology. The promising touch market allows Chinese manufacturers to plan a new pattern in the horse racing circle, either expanding production capacity, or merging or acquiring, or investing in new plants, introducing new production lines, and spare no effort to seize market share. In recent years, driven by high-end electronic products from Apple and other manufacturers, the development of the touch screen industry has become more and more in-depth, and the expanded fields have become wider and wider. The accumulation of quantity has entered an explosive period of qualitative change.

Processor chip manufacturers are no exception. They are aiming to attack the large-scale single-piece glass solution (OGS) and attack the touch market. After NVIDIA, Intel, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and other processor manufacturers also intend to develop a system-on-chip (SoC) that integrates touch algorithms, and a turnkey solution (Turnkey SoluTIon) with CPU and touch chip deployment. Highlight the differentiation of its products and expand the territory of the processor. After the big processor manufacturers have stepped into the field of touch chips, the market shares of existing touch chip manufacturers such as Cypress, Atmel, Hetai Semiconductor and others are bound to face no small threat.

So, faced with the pressure of the army and the siege, the traditional touch chip manufacturers are striving to strengthen their presence in the touch market and enhance product differentiation to defend their inherent market position?

Enhance product differentiation and added value, Hetai integrates touch IC functions

Cai Rongzong, general manager of Hetai Semiconductor, said that in the market application, it must meet China's touch specifications, such as EMI, EMS, etc., which is also a new challenge on the technical level!

Cai Rongzong, general manager of Hetai Semiconductor, said that he has been operating in the application field of touch button solutions for many years, and the growth rate has been quite high in recent years. The sales volume of touch solutions in the first half of 2013 is close to 19KK. It is estimated that this year the average sales can exceed 10KK per quarter. Among them, the application rate of induction cooker and range hood is the highest. (Refer to Chart 1)

Table 1 Shipment of Hetai Semiconductor Touch MCU (Source: Provided by Hetai Semiconductor)

The short-term application goal will continue to expand the application of small household appliances, such as electric teapots, electric ceramic stoves, rice cookers, electric pressure cookers. and many more. These main sales areas are still mainly in the mainland. In the medium and long term, they will actively expand overseas markets and promote them to white goods, such as refrigerators, washing machines, and electronic door locks for security products, safes, and wall power switches. In particular, the technical threshold of the wall power switch is high, but the market usage is considerable, and it is a key project to be concerned in the future.

Table 2 Hetai Semiconductor Touch MCU Application Fields (Source: Provided by Hetai Semiconductor)

In the human-machine interface, the rise of wearable devices is a new situation in touch applications. More requirements are on energy saving and precision touch. To save energy and power, not only the IC itself needs to have low power consumption, but also the mechanism and function of active intelligent power saving.

Cai Rongzong emphasized that precision touch requires excellent suppression and protection of the environment and power supply interference, so that accurate touch positioning and judgment can be achieved. On the market application side, it must meet the requirements of China's touch specifications, such as EMI, EMS, etc., which is also a new challenge on the technical level!

Benefiting from new breakthroughs in gesture control and touch materials, the ease of use and interaction of the human-machine interface have increased, which is closer to consumers' habits.

Gesture touch recognition ability has become the focus of touch IC design. Not only to be able to recognize absolute coordinates, but also to be able to correctly recognize posture, track handwriting and multi-finger movements, these requirements make the information that the touch IC must process extend from points to lines and planes, from 0D to 2D.

In order to shorten the development and testing time, reduce the process and frequency of Try & Error, and enable the products that use touch to be quickly, stably, and reliably launched on the market, Hetai will launch a touch product development platform with a sound development team Technical online support, so that it is ready to use, ready to use, ready to assist development engineers to quickly complete tasks and goals. This is also a necessary development tool for the promotion of touch products in the future, and in this way, it will open the distance to competitors and raise the threshold for competition.