It is pleased to introduce the coverage of Mr. Satoshi Hanazawa, senior vice president and chief product officer from ABLIC by EE Times and EE Times Europe as of October 15th, 2024, a leading online media for the electronics industry in the United States of America and European market as follows.
ABLIC is advancing the creation of high-value analog-digital integration, aiming for a leading position in niche semiconductor fields
ABLIC is further expediting the process of adding extra value to its products. By incorporating peripheral logic circuits into analog circuit technology, the field in which it specializes, ABLIC will add extra functionality to its products and enhance their value. In addition to, significantly incorporating the large-scale logic circuit technology developed by Samurai Semiconductor Corporation (SSC), a semiconductor design company acquired by ABLIC in April 2023, ABLIC has also revamped its planning and development departments. ABLIC is utilizing the strategy of increasing the hit rate of new products and securing market shares in global niche fields.
The inventory adjustment phase is coming to an end.
- Tell us how you see the economic conditions, now and in the second half of FY 2024.
Satoshi Hanazawa: As the COVID-19 pandemic drew to a close in FY 2023, an inventory adjustment phase was immediately necessary, and there were times when the company struggled in terms of performance, especially in the first half of the fiscal year. However, with the inventory adjustment phase finally ending at the beginning of FY 2024, demand is beginning to pick up again. Data centers, which are our main targets, are experiencing a slow recovery, but demand is on the rise in the automotive, medical, smartphone, and laptop sectors. While inventory adjustments are ongoing for some key sectors, market conditions are favorable, and demand is solid; therefore, we expect these fields to show steady growth once inventory adjustments are complete.
Driving growth with high-value-added analog-digital integration.
- Tell us about your mid- to long-term product strategy.
Hanazawa: We plan to accelerate our market launch of highly integrated mixed-signal solutions that incorporate peripheral digital circuit technology into analog semiconductors, which are ABLIC's strength. We also plan to increase company profits by expanding our high-value-added products through analog-digital integration and solidifying our presence in niche fields.
More specifically, our focus is on five product groups: lithium-ion battery protection ICs, power management ICs for automotive applications, medical equipment ICs, Hall effect ICs (magnetic sensor ICs), and our flagship energy-harvesting CLEAN-Boost technology . While we have been involved in all of these fields for an extensive time, we plan to pursue higher-value-added products by adding extra functionality, using analog and mixed-signal technology. We refer to this extra functionality as “further growth”. Our basic aim is to increase the number of our products on customers' mounting boards, through this growth strategy.
* Overview of further growth. The goal is to increase added value by incorporating digital circuit technology into current analog circuit technology.
- Specifically, what solutions will you be providing?
Hanazawa: In the field of lithium-ion battery protection ICs, in addition to protection ICs that cut off current flow we have already launched, we are increasing our lineup of highly integrated analog front-end (AFE) ICs that perform advanced processing for current and voltage control, as well as monitoring. Demand for such AFE ICs is particularly high for large-scale energy storage systems (ESS) and electric vehicles (EVs). Now that we have established a solid position in the niche market of protection ICs for relatively small systems like smartphones, we will use this position as a foothold to enter the market for large-scale, complex industrial systems.
In the field of power management ICs for automotive applications, we plan to expand our product lineup to include lithium-ion battery protection ICs for lithium batteries, which are becoming increasingly more utilized in vehicles, high-current DC-DC converters, and power management ICs (PMICs).
For medical equipment ICs, we plan to offer receiver ICs for ultrasound diagnostic equipment, besides transmitting ICs already available. We also aim to develop a new field of transmitter-receiver ICs, such as handheld ultrasound diagnostic equipment for the growing medical markets, SONAR (sound navigation and ranging) detectors, and NDT (non-destructive testing) systems that can safely inspect any application without causing damage, utilizing a comprehensive range of our technical strengths.
In the field of Hall effect ICs (magnetic sensor ICs), we are developing new products, such as Hall effect encoders (incremental) and linear Hall effect sensors, not only for simple open/close detection applications but also for more advanced rotation and displacement detection applications.
CLEAN-Boost is ABLIC's unique and flagship energy harvesting technology that stores and enhances the voltage of small amounts of environmental energy such as water, vibration, and temperature difference. The “battery-less water leak sensor,” which generates electricity from water and wirelessly notifies the user of water leaks, is an unrivaled product now being introduced in the Japanese market. We aim to increase the number of partner companies that utilize our CLEAN-Boost technology and continue to intensify efforts to create a market outside of commercialized power supply solutions (Power supply cores) for energy harvesting.
All of the above products are currently under development, and we expect to launch many of them in FY 2026, with East Asia, Europe, and the United States as the key markets for these new products.
* Overview of battery-less solutions linking energy harvesting to IoT.
Large-scale logic circuit integration is the key element.
- In April 2023, Samurai Semiconductor Corporation (SSC), specializing in logic design, was integrated into our company. Are we right to assume it will play an important role in the company's product strategy?
Hanazawa: SSC's large-scale logic circuit design technology is very strong for advanced control circuits. Large-scale logic circuits are a field that ABLIC was not sufficiently equipped to tackle through our technology alone, and integration with SSC has significantly strengthened our capabilities in this area. As a result, the number of projects for developing solutions that incorporate large-scale logic circuits and utilize SSC's technology has steadily increased.
Reforming the company's organizational structure to improve the hit rate of new products.
- Tell us about your investment strategy.
Hanazawa: We are mostly investing in human resources right now. As for manufacturing, in addition to IDM (integrated device manufacturing), we are effectively using our external foundries to increase production efficiency. Furthermore, we are increasing the overall ratio of new products. Compared to FY 2023, we plan to double the ratio by FY 2026. This is an ambitious goal, and we are sparing no effort to increase this ratio since it will directly lead to higher profits.
We will also intensify efforts to increase the hit rate of new products. Our strategy is to improve our planning quality by clarifying the specific role of developed products in contributing to sales. To that end, we revamped our organizational structure in May 2024. We created separate departments for planning and development, which had previously been under a single department, switching to a structure in which each department is responsible for sales. Having separate planning and development departments will sharpen our awareness of product strategy.
A winning strategy of strong analog technology is to achieve size-reduction and power-saving.
- Some fields you referred to as further growth are rife with competitors. Tell us again about ABLIC's strengths.
Hanazawa:Our predecessor, Seiko Instruments Inc. semiconductor business had been working on CMOS ICs for quartz watches for half a century. The power-saving technology and ultra-small packaging technology that was developed during that period constitute ABLIC's greatest strengths. For example, our high-current DC-DC converters are smaller and consume less power than competing products of equal performance. As for our applications, our ICs make it possible to reduce the size (of the application) and increase power efficiency. Developing efficient and compact products is our biggest strength, and it also embodies our vision of “Small, Smart, Simple”.
In contrast to digital semiconductors, where design automation is of utmost importance, analog semiconductors are developed with the technology and know-how accumulated over many years of production. Our reliable process technology makes us very competitive in this field, leading to success with further growth, accelerating market development, and business growth.
・Sep.20, 2024 News release : Notice regarding acquisition of medical-related businessThis article was originally
This article was originally published in EE Times and EE Times Europe on October 15, 2024.
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