I Love Audio traveled to Suzhou last week to visit Lou's factory in Suzhou, which is also the world's largest microphone production base, to find out the story behind the 12 billion microphones shipped.
Building's microphone products have factories in Suzhou and Malaysia, and the Suzhou factory accounts for more than 60% of the group's total production.
In addition to silicon microphones, the Suzhou plant is also responsible for high-end ceramic capacitors, which are used in aerospace, telecommunications and medical applications. Lou's moving iron units and hearing aid components are produced in factories in the Philippines and Malaysia.
Lou's Suzhou factory was established in 1996 in Suzhou Industrial Park, and began producing silicon microphones in 2004. In 2015, Lou's Electronics moved into the Xiangcheng Economic Development Zone in Suzhou to upgrade its scale, which covers an area of about 80 acres, and with the gradual increase in production and sales, the Suzhou factory has become the most important production site for Lou's Electronics microphones.
When I love audio network into the floor of the electronic microphone production workshop inside, we found 2 very special things:
1, the workshop staff work only about 300 people
2, the entire microphone workshop covers only 1/3 of the total area of the floor of the Suzhou base
can not help but Let a person surprised at a few hundred people in the workshop is how to carry the floor of the global needs of most customers? So we take these two questions into the building's Suzhou factory inside, and have the honor of Lou's Electronics China Consumer Electronics Division, Vice President of Product Management and Managing Director of China, Mr. Lu Wenjie in-depth communication exchanges, to solve the problem together.
Microphone Production Line Technology and Capabilities
The Suzhou factory of Lou's Electronics has a very complete MEMS process in the industry
Adopting a fully automated semiconductor packaging line
Implementing the industry's most stringent microphone testing system
We can provide everything from Silicon microphones to microphones, from application analysis, product design, process development, and testing.
Lou's history dates back to the 1840s
People had just come out from the shadow of World War II, but many veterans returning home from long hours of bombardment had their hearing severely impaired, or even deaf in both ears, and the speakers of hearing aids in those years were very large, inconvenient to wear, and heavy in weight.
Based on this, Hugo Knowles, the founder of Lou's Electronics, invented the hearing aid, which brought great benefits to the majority of deaf people later.
Because of the small size and high sensitivity of the moving-iron unit used in the hearing aid, resulting in a small size, easy to wear, etc., by the veterans of the warm response, and from this point on, the moving-iron unit has become the best choice of hearing aids.
Hugo Knowles founded Knowles Lou's Electronics in 1946 in Itasca, Illinois.
How to position and synergize Knowles' development to date
After this establishment, Knowles Electronics has worked with a number of fields.
Since 1946, the Floor Group has introduced a wide range of technology platforms in microacoustics, mechatronics, and other related fields to help customers realize their business potential. With its unique technological edge in acoustic research, Lou has been the largest supplier of components to the hearing aid market. Lou also applies its unique technology to the consumer electronics market (e.g., cell phones, PDAs, PCs, and laptops) with microphone components, speakers, and products (e.g., headphones, audio adapters for USD interfaces), and the company is present in the U.S., U.K., Denmark, India, Malaysia, Philippines, China, India, India, Malaysia, Philippines, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other countries. The company has factories, subsidiaries and marketing centers in USA, UK, Denmark, India, Malaysia, Philippines, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
Taking the lead in smart microphone layout, leading the market development
In addition to the traditional microphone, Lou's Electronics continues to innovate, for the current market development of the very fast smart headset, smart speaker and many other portable products, Lou's specializes in these products to provide a very low-power consumption of intelligent voice solutions.
Lou's smart microphone is a microphone and DSP integrated product with industry-leading low-power performance. With the smart microphone, vendors can use this platform to intervene in other connectivity, such as Amazon and Google's smart voice services.
Additionally, on June 12, 2019, Lou, along with Amazon, announced the first hand-free Bluetooth voice development kit.
The AISonic Smart Microphone Headset Development Kit is the world's first reference design to be certified by Amazon AVS and is fully compliant with the AMA specification, helping OEMs/ODMs to quickly develop products to market and provide consumers with a fully Hand-free voice interaction experience.
I love audio summary
2018 company Lou's electronic global performance of 5.6 billion yuan, an increase of 11% over last year, up to now, Lou's electronic microphone has accumulated shipments of 12 billion, and this data is still rising year by year.
As the industry's leading provider of high-performance audio solutions, Lou's has energized the market while delivering better audio quality and giving consumers greater control over their voice technology.
At the same time, Lou's Electronics will be present on August 22, 2019 to participate in: I love audio network "2019 (Spring) China Bluetooth Headset Industry Summit Forum", will bring us the latest product information, want to understand the depth of Lou's Electronics new partners, we will see you on the scene: