It was brought to my attention that AltaSens, Inc. has announced that it has been wholly acquired by JVC KENWOOD on Aug. 10, 2012. After the acquisition Altasens becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of JVC KENWOOD.
"AltaSens’ products and technology have tremendous applicability to JVC KENWOOD’s existing products such as security camera, professional video camera, and future product developments," said Kensuke Kawai, JVC KENWOOD’s Officer and CTO. "AltaSens will be aiming to accelerate growth as a self‐standing company with numerous outside world‐class customers and tremendous sales potential in this rapidly growing industry."
Lester Kozlowski, AltaSens Founder, CTO, and COO stated, "We are extremely excited by this acquisition and the tremendous opportunity to work even more closely with JVC KENWOOD in the future. We are equally as thrilled with the renewed focus on quickly creating unique products leveraging innovative sensor technology for our existing and prospective customers. We consequently look forward to once again providing the world’s best image sensors."
JVC Kenwood CTO Kensuke Kawai becomes Altasens' President and CEO.
The news appears to be announced only on Altasens web site. Thanks to PM for pointing me to it!
Update: I was told that AltaSens used to be a fully owned subsidiary of Olympus Corp. Now JVC-Kenwood aqcuired it from Olympus. With this AltaSens becomes a fully owned subsidiary of JVC-Kenwood.
Does someone know how much it was sold for?
ReplyDelete$6.38M
DeleteCongratulations Lester-san, I think.
ReplyDelete火鉢から火に移動しますか？
BTW, my first experience with image sensors (CCDs) was working with/for Lester during a summer job at Hughes Aircraft Company in the summer of 1981. I think the test rack must have had over 50 degrees of freedom in analog adjustments to make the CCD work optimally.
Stop, you're making me cry with nostalgia. I remember similar days. I'll call them "good ole" days now, but I don't think I felt that way back then.
DeleteFifty knobs to turn? That's so much easier than the thousand registers in a modern CMOS sensor...
Funny point about the 1000 registers. I guess that is the consequence of making the sensor be able to do all kinds of tricks that those early CCDs could not do. 50+ adjustments just to readout the whole image with single source follower analog output. No gains, no exposure control, no multiresolution, no anything except the image. Not to mention the ADCs and "ISP"- which didn't really exist as such.
DeleteAnother point is that every CCD required a different tuning to operate optimally. Yeah, the good ole days.....well, not really as you said.
火鉢から火に移動しますか？translation please?
ReplyDeleteWe kids in our mid-forties are hip to a crazy new technology called Google Translate:
ReplyDelete"Do you go to the fire from the brazier?"
Do you think that I don't know google translation, haha?
DeleteBut what is the real meaning of this sentence?
maybe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_from_the_frying_pan_into_the_fire
DeleteThe japanese say 縁は異なもの、縁は味なもの.
ReplyDeleteWas sold off for just 6.38M.
ReplyDeleteProbably less than Eric Fossum got when he sold Photobit.
DeleteThat means the market for CMOS Image Sensor is no longer exploding, only sustaining.