O2Micro was founded in April 1995 to develop semiconductor peripheral components for notebook computers. The company recently acquired financing from H&Q Asia and has approx. 35 employees with expertise in notebook PCs and mixed signal design. Current foundry partners include UMC, Samsung and Orbit. Its product lines include LCD backlight inverters, PCMCIA/CardBus controllers and power mgmt. ICs.

The company makes a family of smart power products which allows OEMs to standardize the power plane design in notebook PCs. O2Micro's smart PMU (power mgmt. unit), smart charger, smart selector and smart battery ICs work together to efficiently charge and manage power in a notebook system using the System Mgmt. Bus (SMB) endorsed by Intel and Duracell. The smart selector IC enables arbitration and intelligent handshaking of multiple batteries.

A LCD backlight inverter IC has very high operating efficiency and decreases inverter space requirements, enabling OEMs to use larger LCDs without retooling. Although targeted at notebook PCs, the device is useful in any application that requires high efficiency LCD backlight inverters.

O2Micro also makes a family of PC Host adapter ICs including an ISA to PCMCIA controller, a PCI to PCMCIA controller and a triple zoomed video Cardbus controller. The devices offer innovations such as automatic voltage and function sensing of newly inserted PC cards, even in suspend mode.

The company has customers world-wide and has announced design wins at Acer. It has licensed its triple zoomed video CardBus controller IC to Rohm. Sales channels have been established in Texas, Northern California and the Northwest, Europe, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. The company has also opened an Asian Pacific Regional Operation Center in Taiwan. While the desktop chipset market is dominated by Intel, the notebook market is still highly fragmented. The notebook market is expected to double in the next few years and O2Micro appears to have the technological innovation necessary to make an impact.

Sterling Du, President (formerly at Green Logic, Momenta and Intel)
Jim Keim, VP, Sales & Mktg.

US Office:
3118 Patrick Henry Drive
Santa Clara, CA 95054
408/987-5920, 408/987-5929 fax
info@o2micro.com