SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Immersion Corp. (NASDAQ:IMMR), the leading developer and licensor of haptic technology, today announced that it has signed a license agreement with Onkyo Corp., a Japanese leading electronics manufacturer. Onkyo has a wide range of product solutions from luxury audio devices to its newly launched smartphone. The agreement enables Onkyo to use Immersion TouchSense® Premium and TouchSense® Lite technologies in its smartphones.
With Immersion's TouchSense technology, device manufacturers can appeal to users' sense of touch by incorporating high-quality tactile effects and feedback in user interfaces and applications to simulate the connected experiences of the real world.
Immersion launched TouchSense Premium and TouchSense Lite to address the various business goals and production constraints of device manufacturers, making haptics more accessible and affordable to implement in a wide range of devices. While OEMs designing high-end mobile handsets require high-fidelity effects, many are also looking for a more affordable solution to enable high-quality haptic effects for their lower-end devices.
“Our TouchSense technology brings the finest touch effects to mobile devices, and we are pleased to work with Onkyo to further enhance the user experience of its smartphones,” said Nobumitsu Shimada, Immersion’s Representative Director and Country Manager, Japan.
“We have a longstanding reputation for high-quality consumer electronics. Building on that, we released our first smartphone in February 2017 and look forward to creating new models with high-quality haptics from Immersion,” said Nobuaki Okuda, Chief Technology Officer, Onkyo.
TouchSense Premium Solution Offers Highest Quality Haptics
Immersion’s best-in-class TouchSense Premium solution offers the highest quality haptics available for OEMs designing high-end mobile handsets requiring high-fidelity effects. TouchSense Premium technology supports Pressure Haptics, an emerging feature in many premium handsets. Onkyo will work with Immersion to achieve optimized haptic experiences through effect customization and UI analysis, hardware tuning and software integration services.
TouchSense Lite Solution Enables Standard Quality Haptics
TouchSense Lite is a turn-key, cost-efficient solution enabling standard quality haptics leveraging a pre-designed library of tactile effects. This offering is easier to integrate as it is implemented at a higher level of the software stack and packages predefined built-in effect sets tuned for a range of common hardware configurations in the mobile market. Integration guidelines and haptic design best practices are also provided in the product package to help OEMs facilitate implementation.
About Immersion
Immersion Corporation (NASDAQ: IMMR) is the leading innovator of touch feedback technology, also known as haptics. The company provides technology solutions for creating immersive and realistic experiences that enhance digital interactions by engaging users’ sense of touch. With more than 2,400 issued or pending patents, Immersion's technology has been adopted in more than 3 billion digital devices, and provides haptics in mobile, automotive, advertising, gaming, medical and consumer electronics products. Immersion is headquartered in San Jose, California with offices worldwide. Learn more at www.immersion.com.
About Onkyo
Since 1946, Onkyo has been passionately committed to developing audio products that deliver uncommon performance, quality, and value. Bundling proprietary technologies and innovations with other sound-enhancing exclusives, Onkyo continues to create award-winning products that are lauded by industry-leading publications. The company's philosophy is to deliver products that are superbly designed and built to a consistently outstanding standard of excellence. The results can be seen in the obvious quality of any Onkyo-manufactured product, even before it’s turned on. For more information, visit the Onkyo website at onkyousa.com.
Forward-looking Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of Immersion Corporation and its consolidated subsidiaries to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
All statements, other than the statements of historical fact, are statements that may be deemed forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the benefits of Immersion’s TouchSense technology, including TouchSense Premium and TouchSense Lite, the continuing availability of Onkyo’s smartphones with Immersion’s TouchSense technology, and future collaboration between Immersion and its customers, including Onkyo.
Immersion's actual results might differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with Immersion's business, which include, but are not limited to: unanticipated difficulties and challenges encountered in product development efforts (including with respect to Immersion’s TouchSense Technology) by Immersion and its licensees; unanticipated difficulties and challenges encountered in implementation efforts by Immersion’s licensees; adverse outcomes in any future intellectual property-related litigation and the costs related thereto; the effects of the current macroeconomic climate; delay in or failure to achieve adoption of or commercial demand for Immersion's products or third party products incorporating Immersion's technologies; and a delay in or failure to achieve the acceptance of touch feedback as a critical user experience. Many of these risks and uncertainties are beyond the control of Immersion.
For a more detailed discussion of these factors, and other factors that could cause actual results to vary materially, interested parties should review the risk factors listed in Immersion's most current Form 10-K, and Form 10-Q, both of which are on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements in this press release reflect Immersion's beliefs and predictions as of the date of this release. Immersion disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements as a result of financial, business, or any other developments occurring after the date of this release.
Immersion, the Immersion logo, and TouchSense are trademarks of Immersion Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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