Pixart Research Reports

MasterLink Securities published a couple of interesting research reports on Pixeart business.
The big report is here with a recent status update here.

Some excepts from the report regarding Pixart collaboration with Mediatek and TI:

"PixArt entered camera phone chipset (sensor plus DSP) market in 2004, targeting at VGA level camera phone, and this product accounted for 8% of overall sales in 2004. PixArt’s camera phone chipset was collocated with MediaTek’s baseband to sell to China market in 2Q05, leading to its revenue from camera phone chipset growing 691% to NT$1.28bn in 2005, accounting for 43% of total sales in 2005. Camera phone chipset thus became PixArt’s growth driver in 2005.

However, China government prohibited “White brand” handset in 1H06, leading to PixArt’s shipment for camera phone chipset shrinking to only around 1mn units monthly in 1H06. PixArt is thus aggressively cooperating with UMC to lead in CMOS 4T process to enter MEGA pixel market and we expect this new product to successfully enter mass production in 2H06. Moreover, PixArt has designed in its camera phone chipset into TI’s supply chain. We expect PixArt’s camera phone chipset to start shipping to Taiwan’s handset ODM through collocated with TI’s baseband in 2H06. We thus believe PixArt’s camera phone chipset will regain growth momentum in 2H06 and expect to see 40% sales growth in 2007, despite we estimate the sales from this product line would decrease 27% in 2006 due to poor performance in 1H06."

About optical mouse sensors:

"PixArt launched optical mouse sensor in March 2002 and this product became PixArt’s growth driver in 2003. However, due to the IP lawsuit with Agilent and heavy competition with several new suppliers such as Sunplus, PixArt’s optical mouse sensor sales sequentially dip in 2004 and 2005. Currently, Avago (previous Agilent’s IC division) is the leader among mouse sensor suppliers with around 50% to 60% market share, and PixArt is the second leader with around 20% market share.

We expect to see PixArt’s mouse sensor return growth trend in 2006 and 2007 due to the lawsuit settlement with Agilent on 14th July 2006 and the expected launch for new product, laser mouse sensor. After the lawsuit settlement, PixArt can ship its mouse sensor to America and we expect Logitech, the global mouse leader, will increase the adoption rate for PixArt’s mouse sensor thanks to its peering performance to Avago and lower price. Moreover, laser mouse sensor is expected to be a new growth driver for PixArt’s mouse sensor business in 2007, but we estimate the contribution is little due to price still too high to accept for consumers. We thus estimate PixArt’s mouse sensor sales would sequentially grow 8% in 2006 and 2007."

Also, there are two interesting market forcast graphs:





Other interesting reports on this site:

Largan Presision report on camera optics,
Genius Electronic report on camera lens business,
Premier Image Technology reports 1 , 2 and 3 on camera business,
Sunplus reports 1 , 2 and 3 on ISP, among other things.