Citizen Holdings Co. has acquired the Ferroelectric LCOS (FLCOS) display operations of U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. The acquisition is through a U.S. unit newly established by Citizen Finetech Miyota Co., a Citizen Holdings subsidiary that manufactures electronic parts. Citizen Finetech Miyota has been marketing FLCOS imagers for a variety of applications including Head Up Displays (HUD) and digital camera electronic viewfinders . Citizen’s FLCOS imagers were co-developed with DisplayTech, which was itself acquired by Micron in mid-2009. Citizen will also take over Micron’s FLCOS production operation and retain around 20 Micron employees.

PMA’s projector market research is following LCOS imager makers as they battle Texas Instruments’ DLP imager in the pico projector market. It is not clear yet if Citizen plans to continue marketing FLCOS imagers to the projector market, or if they will continue the Pop Video iPhone sleeve projector, which uses an optical engine based on the Micron FLCOS imager.

Citizen Finetech Miyota Co.

Micron