San Jose, CA, October 31, 2011 – Atmel® Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions, today announced maXStylus™, an active stylus solution for tablets and smartphones. Combined with Atmel’s industry-leading maXTouch® solutions, which are powering millions of smartphones and tablets today, the maXStylus family offers an unparalleled human interface by providing simultaneous touch and stylus functionality. Referred to as multiSense functionality, this feature enables advanced gesturing such as zooming in/out while writing and scrolling; page flipping while scrolling; and selecting a tool or content.
The maXStylus family is designed to provide the most precise, high-resolution writing experience with a narrow 1mm tip, excellent accuracy and linearity of +/- 0.25mm, advanced gesturing, palm rejection and pressure sensing capability with 256 pressure levels to enhance writing/drawing experiences. The family also supports dual mechanical buttons for customizable features tailored for the end customer. The Atmel mXTS100 is the first solution sampling in this family and works seamlessly with the maXTouch E series and future maXTouch solutions.
The maXStylus family also leverages Atmel’s eco-system and software partners. As a co-engineering partner to Microsoft, the mXTS100 supports Windows 8® and the recently launched Android 4.0™ Ice Cream Sandwich.
Traditional solutions today require two separate sensors to enable both stylus and finger touch functionality. With Atmel maXStylus solutions, OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) can use just one sensor to implement both a stylus and touch simultaneously to simplify system design and reduce overall system cost. The new family also reduces the overall time-to-market for adding touch and stylus features to a design using award-winning maXTouch technology.
“Stylus support will be an important touch component as media tablets migrate to include more creation-oriented applications and Windows 8 incorporates a touch friendly architecture,” said Rhoda Alexander, director, monitor and tablet research at IHS. “A stylus solution allows the user to move past finger input to more specific touchpoints, dramatically improving drawing, writing, and screen navigation while also providing an alternate input for gloved or mittened fingers. Handwriting capability is particularly important in Asia for character recognition and is a must have in much of the education sector. With stylus demand increasing in the fast growing tablet and smartphone markets, companies offering affordable, well designed stylus solutions are well positioned to capitalize on this rapidly growing segment.”
“As the leader in the touch market, Atmel continues to offer the right features that are critical for any touch design such as the first-ever multiSense functionality,” said Jon Kiachian, sr. director of touch marketing, Atmel Corporation. “Customers are demanding stylus support and we are excited to be one of the first companies to provide the highest performance, cost-optimized stylus solution for this rapidly growing segment.”
For more information on the Atmel maXStylus family, please visit: www.atmel.com/maXStylus. To see Atmel’s latest maXTouch videos, visit the Atmel YouTube Channel at www.atmel.com/youtube or follow Atmel on Twitter at www.atmel.com/twitter or Facebook at www.atmel.com/facebook.
Availability
The Atmel mXTS100 is sampling to lead customers in November 2011. Production quantities are expected to ship in Q1FY12.
About Atmel
Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry’s broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.
