ATMEL specializes in high-growth electronic device markets such as communications, computing, consumer products, security products, automotive electronics and industrial applications. In communications, ATMEL can provide a range of complex components and chip sets needed for everything from FLASH memory in cellular phones to wireless voice and data communications. The growing family of baseband controllers and RF components targets traditional as well as emerging markets such as WLAN and Bluetooth, and the high-bandwidth wireless interconnect technologies that are being rapidly embraced by networking and consumer products.
The forecast is that as cell phone technology evolves from 2.5G to 3G, a multi-billion cellular phone market based on the public **** communication protocol UMTS, with geographic coverage of Europe, USA, and Asia, will be created, and ATMEL can provide RF components, baseband processors, and non-volatile memories based on the SiGe process for this market.
As the founding father of non-volatile memory technology, ATMEL continues to integrate this core capability into complex products serving computing and consumer products such as PCs, storage products, DVDs, entertainment platforms, games and toys. In addition to partnerships with a growing number of electronic device manufacturers, ATMEL's high-density memory products, microcontrollers and ASICs are equally at home in industrial controls, military equipment, image processing and automotive equipment.
Security in electronic applications has always been a major issue in the development of computing and communications equipment. ATMEL has a range of products in this area, including confidential microcontrollers and confidential memories, as well as contactless products and biosensors. For example, the company's smart cards and smart card reader chips (ISO7816) are targeted at the European market, as well as the rapidly growing US and Asian security applications. Smart card technology can be used in credit cards, driver's licenses, ID cards, medical ID cards, mobile communications, TV set-top boxes, e-commerce and those related applications that require data security.
Other emerging applications are power management. As more and more features are supported, all handheld devices require power management to improve usage time. Color-screen cell phones consume a lot of power. So a sophisticated power management is necessary to get acceptable battery life. atmel has supplied custom power management ICs to many industry leaders and has developed a range of power management ASSPs to serve this fast growing market.