EONEWS: What are your opinions regarding the major trends for this market (slowing, growing, booming…)?
GRILLO: While the various sub-segments of the Interfaces ICs market have different evolutions, this market is globally growing and in particular the USB portion.
EONEWS: What are the key strategies adopted by your company in the short/medium period to address (or to better address) the needs of the market?
GRILLO: Beside the existing product portofio of RS232 and RS485 compliant devices, as well as smartcard interfaces, which we have recently extended, we have decided to focus our efforts on the USB interface market by developing innovative solutions impacting the way users use the USB ports.
EONEWS: What are you doing in order to implement your strategies (partnership/agreements, new acquisitions, investments in activities like R&D, people…)?
GRILLO: We went through ST internal R&D development, taking advantage of our wide technology and assembly capacities, to firstly develop products for the USB ports of the computer market.
Other segments will be addressed in the short and medium term.
EONEWS: What are the most important application?
GRILLO: Our new USB products answer to the need of controlling the charge of devices connected to a USB port.
EONEWS: Which are the key factors that set your company apart from the competition?
GRILLO: Our new products (STCC5011 and STCC5021) go a step further in saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions by allowing users to charge mobile devices from a USB port even when the computer is in software-controlled shutdown mode. Using a unique attach-detection feature, which is patented by ST and operates when the PC is shut down, the chips can detect when a mobile device has been connected.
This enables the PC’s power supply to be activated for charging. The chips also monitor the current to turn the power supply off when charging is complete and thereby maximize the energy savings. Other charger emulators require the PC to be in working or sleep mode to charge the device, which consumes more power than when the PC is in shutdown mode.
EONEWS: And in the middle/long term (if you have a crystal ball!)?
GRILLO: We are considering the USB Power Delivery standard as a potential breakthrough in the coming years.
Read the article on EONews 568-October