SMIT Makes Investments in Unknown Shenzhen-Based Company

SMIT Holdings Limited together with its subsidiaries, (the group), a CAM supplier and a big mPOS supplier in China, announced its new investments in two technology companies.

The investments are aimed at facilitating strategic cooperation and further product development by leveraging SMIT’s industry experience with technologies provided by a Shenzhen flash memory control chips and a US advanced touch solution companies.

A Shenzhen based IC design company
SMIT has invested RMB20 million in a Shenzhen-based company that specializes in IC design for flash memory control chips, acquiring about 3.4% of its shares.

This company develops and sells main control chips for flash memory, which are principally applied in the telecommunications, consumer electronics and data processing sectors. Its core products include SD and eMMC controllers and high-speed NAND controllers, which meet the demand of the younger generation of consumers for high access speed, high capacity, low electricity consumption and durable storage technology.

The firm is founded and managed by experts in the flash storage industry, and is one of the few technology companies with the capability to design high-end controllers including SD/ eMMC/ UFS/ SSD devices.

Its self-designed flash controllers represent good value for money, and possess more than 40 scientific firmware intellectual properties and patents.

A US advanced touch solution company
SMIT has also invested $2 million in a US-based company that specializes in touch solutions.

The investment was made in form of a convertible bond with firm expectations to be converted to the company’s shares during their next principal investment round, to be secured as the company’s Series A.

This firm company makes high-resolution, force enabled sensors incorporating their Pressure GridO technology, which outperforms existing industry-standard touch solutions in accuracy, latency, and power, while offering an extra dimension of control in the form of force sensitivity.

It has IP with patents for core technology and aims to develop new touch interfaces offering a new degree of expression and control to all kinds of users of various devices.

The Pressure GridO technology deployed in its products provides a new dimension for touch interaction offering true multi-touch with per-finger force sensing, high frame rate and tracking precision, detection of any object with extreme sensitivity and third dimension for touch interaction. Its products can be widely applied in many ways, including drawing with any tool; detecting any object in any environment; sensing force and touch through any thin and flexible material; enabling interactions on any size or shape of display; adding new dimensions to mechanical interfaces; giving high-resolution, high-dynamic range and high-speed trackpad functionality to notebooks; and full keyboard and trackpad replacement.

Shuai Hongyu, president, SMIT, said: “These two investments are important to SMIT, leveraging our rich experience in the IC-based security industries while building important relationships globally. By investing into the companies with cutting edge technologies, we believe that they represent more than greater business opportunities; they also strengthen our position as a technology leader. We will continue to focus on security industry and will consider to invest into enterprises on the front end of innovation.”

SMIT Holdings Limited is a security devices provider for pay TV broadcasting access worldwide and for mobile point-of-sale, or mPOS, payment systems in China. The company’s main product types are CAMs and mPOS devices. According to Frost & Sullivan, the company was the largest CAM provider globally by both sales volume and revenue in 2014 and for the first half of 2015. In addition, the company was a major mPOS supplier in China.