Cochlear and NXP Semiconductors sign design and manufacturing agreement

Oct 14 2009

Cochlear Limited, Australian based world leader in Implantable Hearing Solutions, and NXP Semiconductors announced today that they have signed an agreement for the design and manufacturing of IC devices for Cochlear’s future generation Implantable Hearing devices.

The agreement includes the definition, development and supply of ultra low power speech processor and wireless communication ICs to be used in Cochlear’s next generation products.

“NXP and Cochlear teams have been working together successfully for several years and our complementary strengths have been key to the development of our market leading implantable hearing solutions,” says Jan Janssen, Senior Vice President, Design & Development at Cochlear. This new agreement extends the partnership into the development and manufacturing of our wireless communication technology even further which is a key component of our future technology developments.

“We are proud to contribute our Ultra Low Power Magnetic Induction Wireless and CoolFlux™ DSP technology to enable Cochlear’s industry leading Hearing Implant solutions,” says Rene Penning de Vries, NXP CTO. “This long-term partnership with Cochlear is another example of NXP’s strategy to achieve leadership in High Performance Mixed Signal application domains. It also illustrates NXP’s engagement in the medical domain, where we target new applications such as wireless (implanted) sensors, medical body area networks and personal healthcare devices.”