I’m happy to report that Akustica has announced their first digital microphone design win with a major customer. On Monday, Akustica announced that Fujitsu will use the Akustica’s AKU2000 digital microphone (the world’s first single-chip digital output mic) in the upcoming Lifebook Q2010 high-end executive notebook. CommsDesign has an article that covers the announcement in some detail.
Fujitsu adopted Akustica’s mic for several reasons: the growing use of VOIP on the laptop, the upcoming support for multi-channel high-definition audio and noise-cancellation algorithms in Microsoft Vista, and, perhaps most importantly, the enhanced voice quality and design flexibility that Akustica’s mic provides. Fujitsu was able to place two microphones above the display in the LCD’s bezel, something that was previously impossible since running the heavy shielded wiring from an analog microphone through the display hinge was not feasible. Furthermore, placing the mics in the laptop bezel is actually the optimal location on a laptop, away from the noise generated by fans, hard discs, DVD drives and the user’s annoying tendency to repeatedly tap the keys on their keyboard.
Update: Brian Dipert’s blog at EDN has a great engineer’s view of the advantages I’ve listed above, plus some more interesting advantages Akustica’s mic offers when it comes to the interference WiFi, Bluetooth and GSM phones can cause when using an old-school analog microphone.
Kudos to Fujitsu on having the vision to be an early adopter of this important new audio input technology and kudos to Akustica for winning such a great customer!
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