16 Dialog Semiconductor Plc | Annual report and accounts 2012 |  Section 2 | Business review Our products and key customers Our power management  audio and display  semiconductor solutions are designed for  portable devices  including smartphones  tablets  Ultrabooks™  ebooks  MP3  MP4 and other media players.  Mobile solutions Dialog focuses on three major sectors: mobile   connectivity and automotive  and industrial. Dialog replaces discrete power management  components with highly integrated  single chip solutions that provide design simplicity   reduce energy usage  save board space for other components and lower the overall bill of materials. Dialog’s Power Management  Integrated Circuits (PMICs) are fully configurable   which means they can be programmed to meet the exact voltage and current needs of every component.  Effective power management in many portable devices presents an increasingly complex array  of design challenges. Smartphones  tablets and  Ultrabooks™ increasingly need to be able to run high definition video  games  GPS maps and audio content and connect via high speed  4G LTE and legacy 3G networks  Wi-Fi and  short-range wireless stands like Bluetooth. 4G LTE  for example  requires a lot more  processing power to decode far greater  amounts of data in the wireless spectrum. At the same time consumers demand displays  that are brighter  bigger and incorporate touch  functionality and  in the future  haptic feedback.  Each of these features is a major battery drain  creating a need for effective power  management technologies.  Multicore devices delegate simple tasks to one  core  while directing more complex  power- hungry tasks to the other core. Each of the  quad- or octal-core application processors needs  to be powered up and down into and out of  sleep state in particular sequences. Dialog’s  solutions excel at handling this power  management complexity. Dialog’s charging  solutions for lithium ion battery systems support  faster charging  more safely and from a wider  variety of sources. With a long legacy of delivering different power  management designs for world-leading mobile  phone manufacturers and portable consumer  OEMs  we seek to optimise all aspects of the  design  including electrical  thermal and  mechanical packaging considerations. These  designs offer sophisticated integration with  multiple power management and analog  functions on the chip  including programmable  high-performance LDOs (low dropout voltage  regulators)  high-efficiency DC-DC voltage  converters  intelligent battery charging circuits   software programmable LED drivers  sensor  ADCs  USB interfaces  and multichannel  audio capabilities. In 2012  Dialog launched a new class of power  management product – DA9063 – our fourth  generation of advanced system PMIC and  flagship product  targeting high-end multicore- based applications. A second member of the  family – DA9021 – addresses lower power  cost-sensitive applications. Our configurable PMICs enable late changes  in board-level designs as additional functionality  that is added into smartphone platforms during  the R&D process. As a platform-based PMIC  can support multiple phone designs  Dialog  helps its customers reduce inventories and  respond to the consumer market’s need for  volume flexibility.  Dialog’s Audio CODECs filter out extreme  background noise and increase the fidelity of  the sound through advanced echo cancellation  and DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technology  that delivers a rich  deep base and clear high  frequencies even in noisy environments. This is complemented by amplifier technology  to improve audio quality through the  headphones and speakers. In 2012  Dialog launched a new class of power  management product – DA9063 – our fourth  generation of advanced system power  management integrated circuit (PMIC). Dialog replaces discrete power management  components with highly integrated  single chip  solutions that provide design simplicity  reduce energy  usage  save board space for other components and lower the overall bill of materials. From left: 