XSense

On March 25th, Carclo PLC (OTC:CCEGF) the manufacturer of Atmel's XSense issued a press release announcing that it would at last receive a 10 million dollar payment from Atmel for achieving full-scale production of the XSense touch sensor. The 10 million dollar payment was triggered when the first production shipment of XSense was achieved on December but Atmel was holding the 10 million dollar payment because of a delay in the Asus tablet program. On the press release Carclo stated:

Production in the downstream manufacturing chain restarted after the Chinese New Year and the immediate customer requirements have been fulfilled. Whilst shipments did not reach the intended levels, this tablet program represents an important milestone in the adoption of FLT (Fine Line Technology) and the experience gained will be invaluable in the rollout of FLT into future programs.

The press release also gave an update on the XSense production ramp-up and it announced that a third XSense manufacturing facility was going to be ready next May. The first XSense manufacturing facility was the pilot line at Carclo's Conductive Inkjet Technologies facilities in Cambridge. The second manufacturing facility was set up at the Atmel facilities in Colorado Springs. And now the third manufacturing facility will be operational in May in Cambridge. Carclo's roadmap is to have the capacity to print one billion 3.1 inch sensors this year.

During the last earnings call Atmel said that XSense was selected by a second large OEM for multiple tablets and ultrabooks.