Smart accessories could be the next big thing

Energy Micro has reassessed its application areas to include 'smart accessories'; devices that connect to and are powered by smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices. The company has also modified its strategic goals; from 1% market share to $1b revenue by 2020.

The addition of two new families to its range of ultra low power Cortex-M based MCUs could help the company realise its goals. The long awaited Giant Gecko and hitherto unannounced Leopard Gecko families of MCUs more than double the company's portfolio of devices, while also driving down the standby current to just 400nA.

Coupled with a faster core and larger memory options, it creates a product portfolio that now also includes a QFP64 package option, said to be in high demand amongst customers.

Together, the Leopard (60 devices) and Giant (40 devices) raise the total number of devices in the portfolio to 180, with the Giant family offering up to 1Mbyte of on-chip Flash. Both families add the new 400nA low power mode, while some variants also integrate a new direct-drive TFT interface, which allows the device to update a TFT display from external SRAM without waking the processor core.

Energy Micro's VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Andreas Koller, was unable to give any market figures for the size of the 'smart accessories' market, but confirmed the company was already engaged in tens of design wins and cited a point-of-sale card reader that plugs in to an iPhone as an example product.

This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.