Monday, February 26, 2018

Infineon Acquires Merus Audio: Better Audio Experience for Smart Home Applications

February 26, 2018: Munich, Germany and Copenhagen, Denmark - Infineon Technologies AG announced today the acquisition of Merus Audio. The start-up, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, was founded in 2010 by Hans Hasselby-Andersen and Mikkel Hoyerby. Merus Audio has created energy-efficient integrated audio amplifier solutions that maximize the audio performance of smart home battery-powered speakers and extend their battery life while minimizing heat and footprint. After integrating Merus Audio, Infineon will be able to offer its customers the full range and cutting-edge Class D audio amplifier portfolio to meet the needs of demanding applications. This complements Infineon's existing PowIRAudio® portfolio of up to 70 watts of power. bc556ap
Andreas Urschitz, president of Infineon's Power Management and Diversity Marketing Group, said: "This move reinforces our ability to bring our customers smart solutions that are fully integrated in the system." Merus Audio's innovative audio amplifier technology is available to Infineon's existing A good complement of sensor and audio processing expertise. "
The fast-growing market for battery-powered smart speakers will benefit particularly from this patented technology, which combines the advantages of extended playback time, compact design and enhanced audio performance. For smart speaker users, the sound quality is more important, the use of speakers to listen to music has become more popular. Merus Audio solutions are based on so-called cascaded converter technology to reduce total harmonic distortion and achieve noise reduction. According to a report released by SAR Insight *, the smart speaker market is projected to have an annual revenue growth of 55% by 2022 (CAGR for 2017-2022). s1227-66bq
Based on Infineon's "From Product to System" strategy, the addition of Merus Audio technology further strengthens Infineon's expertise in human-machine interaction (HMI). For example, Infineon now offers more accurate speech recognition based on Infineon's sensor fusion expertise and uses radar and silicon microphones.
Merus Audio will be fully integrated into Infineon's existing audio business as part of the Power Management and Diversity Marketing Group. Both companies agree not to disclose the financial details of the transaction.
* Source: SAR Insight: Digital Assistant and Voice Interface Services, 2018

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

IDC: Tablet PC shipments worldwide dropped by 13 quarters

Market research firm IDC released data show that the global tablet PC market has 13 consecutive quarters of landslide. Some analysts said that the sharp decline in shipments of tablets are mainly due to the market is saturated, the product life cycle is long and alternative products increased.
Data show that in the fourth quarter of 2017, the global tablet shipments of 49.6 million units, down from the previous year's 53.8 million units 7.9%, the only good news is that the decline did not reach double digits, lower than in 2016. IDC calculated in the statistics of the traditional Tablet PC, as well as screen and keyboard separable variants. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Apple still occupies the market first, while Amazon surpassed Samsung for the first time in second place. The top five vendors have a market share of 69.6%, up from 61.3% in the same period of last year. bsm150gt120dn2
Apple's shipments were basically unchanged from the previous year. However, due to the poor performance of other tablets, Apple experienced another 2.3% increase in market share after two quarters of increase. Prior to this, the apple market share has dropped for 13 consecutive quarters. With a lower price iPad and an upgraded version of the iPad Pro, Apple maintained its market leadership.
In the fourth quarter of 2017, Amazon's tablet shipments increased by 2.5 million units, with a 6% increase in market share. The holiday season is usually the strongest quarter for the performance of Amazon, but this year's performance is particularly prominent, and the company surpassed Samsung in one fell swoop. IDC said it is due to Amazon offers a substantial discount, as well as the latest Amazon tablet integrated Alexa voice assistant. mg100q2ys42
Samsung's tablet shipments fell 1 million units year on year. IDC data shows that the proportion of detachable keyboards and screens in Samsung's tablet devices has increased, but such growth has not been able to make up for the decline of traditional tablets.
In addition, Huawei ranked fourth over Lenovo. Huawei's market share rose 1.2%, Lenovo fell 0.4%. Both companies shipped about 3 million units.
The rise of the Tablet PC is a coincidence, in the iOS and Android system victory over Saipan system, Apple released iPad running iOS, Andrews camp tablet products are rapidly mushroomed, 2011-2014 is the Tablet PC Rapid growth phase.
Among them, iPad in the tablet PC market has always maintained a dominant position, Android camp wins in the brand many, occupy the other half. In the battle between Android and iOS two camps intensified market, Windows 8 and 10 completed a perfect counter-attack, the three systems officially formed a strong situation.
Insiders pointed out that in the year 2017, the tablet PC market has shown such a trend, so the fourth quarter of the data is not surprising. In other words, the refreshment cycle of tablets is closer to that of traditional PCs, not smartphones, and this is the only category that has seen growth.
IDC analyst Jetsh Ublaney said: "So far, the keyboard and the screen can be detached deformation of the market thanks to the development of Microsoft and Apple in the United States product sales.However, this category can continue to be successful Depends on whether other PC makers are willing to join, more importantly, whether the user in other countries can accept this new type of product. "
However, from the current flat-panel market situation, manufacturers seem to have found a good way - specialization. Unlike the notebook market segmentation, Tablet PC specialization to be relatively simple. At present, Tablet PC products are divided into: adhere to the audio and video entertainment line; take the education line; take handwriting, painting, design line, support stylus.