Absolute Sensors, the UK pen-input system developer acquired by Synaptics Inc last month says its Spiral AC magnetic inductive technology is about to take the Christmas toy market by storm as a critical component of the PlayZone range of Zowie International. The Zowie toys, such as Ellie’s Enchanted Garden, have been voted a top ten kids Christmas buy by Wired in the US, and the company expects to be equally successful in Europe next year.
Absolute Sensor’s role has been to provide the pen sensing technology which enables Zowie’s computer controlled board games to keep accurate track of the position of the toy figures used as play markers. This is not an application that Synaptics probably had in mind when it paid an undisclosed sum to acquire Absolute last month (CI No 3,783). The San Jose, California touch-screen maker is rather planning to combine Spiral with its own pattern recognition technology to take a lead in LCD display technology for pen-driven handheld devices.
