MEMS .. Jan 2009

MEMS, a microelectronics manufacturer, remains positive with the company's business outlook for the year, despite the current economic crisis.

It expects the introduction of its silicon microphone products for cellular phones to push the microphone business revenue's contribution to 60-70 per cent this year (2009), from 30-40 per cent now (Jan 2009).

Currently, there is a migration of the traditional electro-component microphones (ECM) to silicon microphones by cellular phone makers due to lower manufacturing cost and time, better performance as well as their smaller size.

So, even if the growth of the mobile phone market is slow, due to this conversion from ECM to silicon microphones, they are able to continue to get orders. There are currently 1.4 billion mobile phones produced in the world. To date (Jan 2009), three major world's mobile phone manufacturers have qualified Memstech's silicon microphones and placed orders for its products.

They have started shipping the silicon microphones to these manufacturers since a year ago (2008)

The group generated revenue of RM71.9 million for the financial year ended July 31 2008, up 33.8 per cent from a year ago. However, its pre-tax profit decreased to RM6.9 million from RM13.1 million, mainly attributed by the commencement of the Penang plant's operations and capital expenditure incurred in its effort to increase the capacity of its silicon microphones.