October 24, 2002

Aichi Steel to Mass Produce Electronic Compass
for Mobile Phones

Aichi Steel Corporation (Headquarters: Tokai-city, Aichi prefecture; President: Yuji Shibata) and its subsidiary, Aichi Micro Intelligent Corporation (AMI / Headquarters: Tokai-city, Aichi prefecture; President: Akiyoshi Morita) have jointly succeeded in the development of the Magnet Impedance (MI) sensor-based micro-mini electronic compass for mobile phones.

An electronic compass, which detects geomagnetism to calculate direction, will be indispensable to the geographic information services that are expected of mobile phone in the near future. 

Conventional electronic compasses used in automobiles would be required to shrink to one thousandth to be incorporated in a mobile phone.  Although micro-mini electronic compasses based on various sensors are being developed, their commercialization has been extremely difficult.

Aichi Steel was commissioned by the Japan Science and Technology Corporation in 1998, and developed the innovative MI sensor, which is 10,000 times as sensitive as a hall sensor.  This time, Aichi Steel and AMI jointly succeeded in development of a micro-mini electronic compass, as a sensor-based application product, by microminiaturizing the MI element and the two-axis switch type of circuit design.

The new product combines the GPS of mobile phones and an electronic compass to enable the Location Base Service (LBS), such as the latest shopping information, providing search and other functions for the first time.  In addition, this sensor is expected to be applicable to all kinds of mobile units, such as automobiles, motorcycles, and small pleasure boats.

Aichi Steel has built a mass-production line with capacity of a million units per month (two million MI sensor elements) in the Aichi Steel Chita Factory, and launched operations on October 1.