Omron and Renesas have recently announced an agreement to jointly develop capacitive touch sensor solutions, a field that is attracting a great deal of interest since the iPhone introduction. Under the agreement, Renesas will integrate OMRON’s touch sensor technology into its R8C Family 16-bit microcontroller (MCU) products and supply touch sensor solutions for household appliances, mobile phones and other devices.
By creating a hardware version of Omron’s touch sensor technology in the form of a touch detection circuit device and integrating it into Renesas’ R8C Family of MCU products as a single chip solution, customers will enjoy such features as enhanced system performance, reduced system power consumption, compact size and reduced overall cost.
Omron is a world leader in touch sensor technology with its proprietary series capacitive division comparison system, which has an established track record in a broad range of markets. Renesas, for its part, has the world’s top market share in the MCU field.
At the moment we’ve no clue whether some handset manufacturer is interested to use the new technology. We’ll certainly watch any news coming out from Omron. In the meantime, if you want to know more, here’s a link to the official press release.