Corporate Facts and Figures

ELAN Microelectronics Corporation is an IC design house founded in May of 1994 to embark in the R&D of integrated circuit and offer touchpad module solutions. With its headquarters located in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park, the company has established comprehensive sales channels and technical support centers in America, Asia, and Europe. Moreover, in Taiwan, ELAN has set up a touchpad module factory in Chung Ho City near Taipei and an IC design and R&D center in Tainan, south of Taiwan. It also has branch offices and customer service centers in the USA, Shenzhen (China), Shanghai, and Hong Kong. ELAN is listed in the Taiwan Stock Exchange since September 2001 and as of this date, its capital has accumulated to NTD 4107M.

Being an IC design house, the company is highly involved in the R&D and marketing of ICs as well as manufacturing of NB input device modules. Its major product lines in IC sector are Microcontrollers, Communication ICs, PC Peripheral ICs, Audio/Video Entertainment ICs (consumer and personal equipment ICs), Capacitive Touchpad and other human smart interface ICs. In NB input device sector, ELAN manufactures Touchpad and Pointing Stick Modules. Applications of these products are quite wide ranging, i.e., ICs are used in notebook computers, cell phones UMPC, MP3, GPS, PMP, mouse, keyboards, etc.; while the touchpad and pointing stick modules are used in notebooks. ELAN is continuously exploring additional applications in the consumer electronics sector and is currently providing ICs specifically for Vista PCs remote device, handwriting-recognition ICs for cell phones, educational learning aid (ELA) toys, fiscal cash registers, electronic dictionary / translators, etc. Meanwhile, ELAN is also expanding its involvement in home electronics microcontrollers, as well as ICs for caller-ID phones, walkie-talkies, etc. With all these undergoing efforts, ELAN is confident to further elevate its competitive position within the top consumer IC design houses in Taiwan.

ELAN places great emphasis in maintaining a strong and self-reliant R&D team. Hence, 55% of its total manpower is made up of R&D engineers and allocates more than 13% of its annual revenue to R&D of new products. ELAN R&D efforts have gained recognitions by winning gold and silver medals in the "Taiwan National Best Invention Award" sponsored by the ROC Ministry of Economic Affairs. It also received a number of "R&D Accomplishment Awards" from the Hsinchu Science Park Administration. The company is also listed as one of the "Best Under a Billion 200 Companies" worldwide by Forbes Global Magazine.

Technical Strength

With its vast product lines, ELAN has earned an extensive number intellectual properties (IP) patents. Its comprehensive know-how on digital, analog, embedded memory, and mixed signal & hi-level design flow technology, enables ELAN to swiftly respond to the rapid changes in technology and market trend. For this reason, ELAN is able to provide new and more practical products on time to meet market needs ahead of its industry peers. Among ELAN's patented IP's are the 8/16/32 bits CPU; 8/16/24 bits 20~150 MIPS DSP; SRAM, OTP, MTP, Flash, & E2PROM embedded memory; 8/12/16 bits data width AD & DA converters; CMOS RF technology; video, audio, and voice CODEC; digital display, i.e., TN, STN, & CSTN; and TFT LCD, VFD, & OLED driver/controller. One recent patent that is worth mentioning is the Multi-Finger technology patent which is expected to propel ELAN competiveness in touchpad market.

With the advent of the digital lifestyle, ELAN is refocusing its efforts toward Digital Home market. In this connection, ELAN has successfully integrated digital video/voice compression with mixed signal technology in various digital consumer product applications. It achieves in making the chip most ideal for multimedia, digital network surveillance and advertising system applications. Additionally, ELAN has also introduced its capacitive touchpad IC, the first to be successfully developed in Taiwan for notebook computer touchpad applications. Its applications will be further extended to include touchpads for portable media player, smart phones, GPS navigator, etc. ELAN's technology on intelligent human-machine interface (HMI) has quite a vast applications and promising market potentials. Development of new product applications will be geared toward consumer items that are easy-to-use, economical, and practical as dictated by market needs. Being able to offer market-oriented digital products endorses ELAN's innovative R&D strength as well as marketing strategic competence.

Aside from boosting R&D of new products, global sales/marketing, customer service, and strategic joint ventures investment, ELAN is also promoting close and harmonious relations with its upstream and downstream manufacturing partners. As a fabless IC vendor, ELAN has cultivated a long-term and close cooperation with its manufacturing partners to whom it outsourced masking, packaging, and testing of its products. This long close partnership and teamwork has enabled ELAN to promptly response to customer needs, thus achieving the goal of "customer satisfaction".

High Caliber Human Resource

As an IC design house, ELAN consistently considers its talented and competent workforce as key assets and the foundation of its competitiveness. This workforce is composed of engineers who are graduates from local and overseas universities and are competently experienced of their respective fields. ELAN also hires those who are new in the fields but are quite willing to undertake and learn from new challenges. To further improve employees' expertise and job satisfaction, ELAN provides regular on-the-job training and offers generous fringe benefits to its employees. This is in addition to providing them with a pleasant high-tech working environment. Currently, about 43% of the total employees hold post-graduate degrees and about 40% of the total workforce have been with the company for over 5 years.