Biometric Smart Cards Partnership Among MagnaChip Q2 Highlights

In the wake of its establishment of a partnership with ELAN Microelectronics, South Korea-based MagnaChip sees a bright future ahead.

The company has published its fiscal update for Q2, and the partnership is among its highlights for the quarter. The companies will work together to produce biometric smart cards, with ELAN providing its fingerprint sensor technology and MagnaChip bringing its 0.35 micron Mixed SignalThink IMD manufacturing technology to the table.

(ELAN licensed fingerprint algorithm software from Precise Biometrics in 2015, but it isn’t yet clear if the software will be used in the smart card solution.)

Looking ahead to Q3, MagnaChip expects revenues to increase by about five percent compared to Q2, suggesting significant growth given that Q2 saw an increase of only 3.1 percent compared to Q1 of this year. It isn’t clear how much of that anticipated increase is expected to come from biometric smart cards – ELAN and MagnaChip have not set out a production timeline – but it’s clear enough that MagnaChip sees an upwards trajectory.

MagnaChip also reported in its Q2 update that its Foundry Services Group saw a 5.2 percent increase in revenues compared to Q1 of 2017, with revenues of $81.5 million against $77.5 million last quarter.