UniPixel Sees Touch Sensors Market Shifting to Its Metal-Mesh Wheelhouse

UniPixel in the past year has established itself as “an important metal-mesh touch-sensor supplier,” CEO Jeff Hawthorne said on a Thursday earnings call. The company has scored 14 touch-sensor design wins for “computing devices that will hit the market later this year and into 2017,” he said. The 14 wins “span a spectrum from tablets, to laptops, to 2-in-1 convertible computers, to point-of-sale devices,” he said. “We have received these orders from U.S.-based companies, as well as international manufacturers.” As UniPixel continues to prove its ability “to deliver on our current multiple program wins, this will pave the way for us to move into consumer product platforms with volumes that are five to ten times larger,” Hawthorne said. UniPixel’s touch-sensor products “are significantly differentiated from those that are currently in wide adoption,” he said. “We see evidence that the market is shifting in favor of metal-mesh, our base technology, as consumers are demanding devices that are thinner, lighter, faster, with highly responsive touch-screens and advanced stylish capabilities.” The company’s recent design wins “reflect the advantage of our unique technology and our creativity in designing real world solutions for the next-generation of computing devices,” he said. Since late-2015, UniPixel at its plant in Colorado Springs has generated “significant cost savings” with the in-house manufacturing of the “base code” for its metal-mesh-screen touch-screen sensors, he said. This positioned UniPixel “more competitively in the market in terms of price and manufacturing yields,” he said. “We still have a long way to go to get to where we want to be. However, we have made great progress in a relatively short period of time.” UniPixel just over a year ago terminated the joint development agreement on copper-mesh touch-sensor technology it shared with Kodak since 2013, saying the risks of developing a viable business model were “too great” (see 1504280030).