Andrew Pease
Analyst · Hawk Hill Asset
Thank you for joining us this afternoon. As Ralph mentioned, our new product revenue came in above the high side of our guidance. This was primarily driven by our 2 smartphone customers, Pantech and Kyocera, who we believe were accelerating shipments of our ArcticLink II VX CSSP so they could build inventory ahead of this year's early Chinese New Year celebration. And these designs are CSSP ships between a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor output and the native RGB input used on the display. The Pantech Vega 5 smartphone utilizes our visual enhancement engine, or VEE, and Display Power Optimizer, or DPO, functions. Pantech brands our technology to their end consumer as Smart Eco and provides user access to it through the Vega 5 Android settings menu. However, the current Kyocera DIGNO smartphone shipped without having these features enabled. As previously discussed, an issue arose with the unique use case that involved our visual enhancement engine and how VEE interacted with their display. Since we also provide the required 60-frames-per-second MDDI to RGB bridging function, the use of our CSSP and our revenue was not impacted. While it is always nice to get another smartphone in the market that features the video quality and improved battery life that VEE and DPO deliver, our quick and complete response has led us to develop an even closer relationship with Kyocera at all levels.
In addition to the Pantech Vega 5 and the Kyocera DIGNO, we expect the third smartphone CSSP design to move into production during the first half of 2012 that uses our ArcticLink II VX CSSP. We have ongoing engagements with Tier 1 and Tier 2 smartphone and tablet manufacturers who are very interested in our recently announced ArcticLink III VX family. These includes tablet manufacturers who provided us with their technical information, enabling us to easily demonstrate the positive impact of VEE/DPO in their tablets.
In addition to our smartphone and tablet engagements, we have won 2 designs with 2 customers in the pico projector market. These designs utilize our ArcticLink II VX CSSP platform. One customer has already entered an initial production order scheduled for shipment at the end of this quarter. The second customer is a large ODM. This design has been completed and was demonstrated under NDA at our private suite during CES in Las Vegas last month. However, production schedules have not yet been established.
We recently announced the new technology tailored for the pico projector market called background color compensator, or BCC. QuickLogic developed BCC to enhance our already strong value proposition in the pico projector market. The core use case for pico projectors is to project content on any surface regardless of color. Since pico projector light engines are calibrated for a white projection surface, this creates a unique design challenge that we have solved with our BCC technology. BCC provides compensation that adjusts the pico projector output color. This enables the picture to look substantially more natural regardless of the color of the projection surface. Pico projectors have been in the market for several years, but they have been slow to gain acceptance. The primary reasons for this are high costs and poor battery life. Recently, the cost of light engines have come down to levels forecasters believe will be acceptable to the market. On the battery life side, the significant trade-off has been between the drain on battery versus the brightness of the image. Our VEE technology enables manufacturers to significantly increase the effective lumens or perceived brightness of any light engine, resulting in a superior viewing experience without sacrificing battery life. According to Pacific Media Associates, roughly 2.8 million pico projectors shipped worldwide during 2011. Pacific Media believes this market will grow more than twentyfold to reach 58 million units by 2015.
Going forward, 2 additional trends in pico projectors are anticipated: achieving higher resolutions and embedding pico projectors into mobile devices. By 2015, Pacific Media expects that nearly 1/3 of all standalone pico projectors will support high definition. QuickLogic CSSPs currently support resolution up to 720p and our new ArcticLink III VX family of CSSPs will support resolutions above 1080p. The second trend will be to embed pico projectors into mobile devices. Our new ArcticLink III VX CSSP platform family has been architected to support the requirements of the embedded pico projector segment. While our near-term revenue opportunities are in the standalone pico projectors segment, we believe sustained growth in this segment will drive OEMs to embed pico projectors into mobile devices.
Our VEE/DPO-based products are also providing us with opportunities in the tablet market. The majority of tablets currently shipping use an LDDS display. Since smartphone displays do not use LDDS, very few mobile application processors provide an LDDS output. This means OEMs typically are required to use a bridge chip that converts the processor display output to the display's native LDDS input. With ArcticLink III VX, tablet manufacturers get full bridging support plus advantages delivered by our new VEE and DPO HD Plus technologies that support display resolutions up to 1920 x 1200. Additionally, ArcticLink III VX integrates our new intelligent backlight control technology called IBC. This QuickLogic design technology works in conjunction with VEE and DPO. When all 3 technologies are used, the net power savings in tablets can be as high as 50% for multimedia use cases.
ArcticLink III VX opens new design opportunities for use in the smartphone market. According to IHS iSuppli, more than 60 million of the smartphones shipped in 2011 required a bridge device between the processor and the display. While this number will decline over time, the ArcticLink III VX family will bring the same benefits to this portion of the smartphone market as it brings to the tablet market. We believe the confluence of adequate market size, consumer need and ArcticLink III VX capability will result in increased design activity for QuickLogic. We remain on schedule to sample ArcticLink III VX late this quarter and we'll begin production shipments during Q3 of 2012.
Over the last year, we developed comprehensive silicon platform and reference design roadmaps that demonstrate our application solutions. Sharing these roadmaps with our customers and silicon partners has resulted in increased traction for all of our solutions. Another important factor is the strong relationship we have with our partner, Apical. Apical's iridix IP core is the basis for QuickLogic's VEE and DPO technologies, and our agreement with Apical gives us the exclusive right to integrate iridix into an integrated circuit device whose sole or primary function is iridix and is sold as a standalone product in mobile devices. We are working very closely with Apical to ensure our market OEM and silicon partner strategies are aligned.
There are more than a dozen application and media processor companies in the world that are targeting the smartphone and tablet market which is forecasted to approach 1 billion units this year. We believe Apical's success in getting their iridix core embedded into a merchant processor will further accelerate the demand and ramp of our VEE/DPO CSSP designs. I realized this might seem counterintuitive from outside the semiconductor industry. Why would QuickLogic want what appears to be a competitive solution in the market? Well, the reason is simple. It creates more potential for QuickLogic for mainstream OEMs who are hesitant to be early adopters of new technologies. The bottom line is, our relationship with Apical is stronger than ever. We are meeting with them more frequently to accelerate potential design wins and are working closely with their engineers as they develop what will be the eighth generation of the iridix IP core.
Following closely behind the sampling of devices from our new ArcticLink III VX platform will be sample availability of our first device from our ArcticLink II CX platform. We will initiate general CX sampling in early Q2 with production beginning in Q3. CX is, by far, the most complex silicon platform ever developed by QuickLogic. This platform includes a USB subsystem that incorporates multiple controllers, PHYs and ULPI interfaces, a DMA subsystem that includes multiple DMA channels, SD controllers that tie into onboard SDXC hosts and onboard encryption subsystems, a 32-bit risk CPU subsystem that ties directly into the USB, DMA and fabric subsystems. This system consists of onboard OTP memory and SRAM, as well as the ability to expand with additional stack memory. And finally, a fabric subsystem, when coupled with the CPU subsystem, allows us to address a vast number of use cases defined by our architects and our customers.
We are utilizing a very aggressive reference platform strategy to leverage the potential of CX. The first of these platforms, called Jupiter, was released last June. This platform allowed our lead CX customer to move forward with product development while waiting for final samples. Jupiter has enabled us to engage with other target customers and potential silicon partners. We are utilizing our reference design strategy to develop a partnership with a Tier 1 silicon supplier that plans to introduce CX-based reference platforms to the mobile enterprise market. Additionally, we are developing an IP partnership with a security software company called CertiVox. CertiVox plans to leverage our CX platform as a system-on-a-chip, or SoC, for cloud-based authentication and encryption.
In 2011, we established the foundation for delivering winning experiences to our customers and our partners. This year, we are beginning to market 2 new key silicon platforms focused on smart connectivity and display visual enhancement. Setting this foundation requires investments in silicon platforms, reference designs, intellectual property and human resources and development. We are executing a comprehensive strategic plan that encompasses all of these investments and we believe sets us on the right course for future growth.
I will now turn you back over to Ralph and look forward to your questions following our Q1 guidance.