The News

Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) to provide Varioptic’s liquid lenses for the mobile phones and PDA market

07/06/2004

Lyon, June 7th, 2004 - Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co a major global player in electronic components industry, and Varioptic a pioneer in electrowetting technology today announce a worldwide licence for SEMCO to manufacture and sale the advanced liquid lenses based on Varioptic’s patented technology, now applied to SEMCO’s auto focused camera modules.

This worldwide product license agreement will enable Semco to offer auto-focus functions for high resolution camera modules in the mobile industry. A collaborative agreement was previously signed on March 18th, 2004.
Varioptic’s technology is the result of a 10 years research at Université Joseph Fourier and at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. The founder and inventor of the technology is Bruno Berge, former research scientist at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and then professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

« SEMCO has chosen Varioptic as a technology source of liquid lens, which provide unique strength of auto-focus function for high resolution camera module in the mobile industry. With this technology, we are developing camera modules targeting for mobile phone and PDA for the world-class mobile phone companies » declare Mr. Hong, V.P. de SEMCO.

“We are happy to see our previous agreement becoming real” says Etienne Paillard, Directeur Général de Varioptic S.A. “This new announcement, daring to take brand-new technology into SEMCO’s camera module products allows us to turn the electrowetting theory and technology into actual products rapidly. We are extremely pleased to partner with SEMCO, a major player in the industry with extremely strong manufacturing capability and commercial presence worldwide.

About Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. Since its foundation in 1973 as a subsidiary of Samsung Group in the electronic industry, Samsung Electro-Mechanics has positioned one of the leaders of the electronic field in 21st century. With the beginning of a new area, the company is focusinf on digital components for mobile industry as a “solution provider”.
For further information, please visit the website : http://www.sem.samsung.com/

A propos de Varioptic
Founded in 2002, Varioptic pioneers the development of Electrowetting Technology for revolutionary Auto Focus lenses and Zooms with absolutely no moving parts. These products feature several crucial advantages versus traditional technologies in terms of cost, dimensions, power consumption and speed. Varioptic maintains its technology leadership thanks to its heavy investment in R&D. Varioptic is located in Lyon (France) and headed by Etienne Paillard, CEO and founder and inventor Bruno Berge (CTO) .
 
Press Contact: Isabelle Jourdain Communications Manager, Varioptic Isabelle.jourdain@varioptic.com Phone : +33 1 48 25 57 26 or +33 6 87 71 20 95