Today I want to tell you about a company that has unique technology that is perfectly suited for battery-powered, high-volume consumer electronics -- just the sort of device that gets content on demand to the user. QuickLogic (QUIK) and I go way back. The company was founded in 1988 by my old friends at Morgenthaler Ventures, and almost 20 years later, QUIK's founding CEO Tom Hart is still running the show. QUIK is a semiconductor company that began as a competitor to Xilinx and Altera in programmable logic semiconductors -- these chips can be inserted into a hardware programmer that alters them to do different functions based on what the customer wants. For example, if the customer wants to sell a portable device that plays audio and another model that plays both audio and video, the same QuickLogic chip can be programmed for both of these uses.
The demand for programmable logic semiconductors is growing, and many customers, like Dell (DELL) and Apple (AAPL), are turning to companies like Xilinx (XLNX), Altera (ALTR) and QuickLogic for their chips. The reason for this transition is that it is very expensive to make full-custom chips to do each of the desired tasks. So companies like QuickLogic that made chips that can be altered according to the customers' needs are profiting greatly from this change.
What makes QUIK so interesting right now is that on April 25, QuickLogic introduced the new product that I've been waiting for -- the ArcticLink. It is based on the PolarPro, but in addition to low power consumption, it adds important functions like USB 2.0 and Bluetooth support. These added capabilities are going to drive sales for ArcticLink, as USB and Bluetooth markets are expanding at a rapid clip. The market research firm iSupply projects that by 2010 there will be 750 million handheld units shipped that include USB. The second most popular connection will be Bluetooth, which iSupply projects will be included in 680 million handheld units by 2010. So as you can see, ArcticLink is going to be a huge product for QuickLogic.
