ST's SPAD Imager Likely Linked to iPhone 8

Apple in Grenoble, ST's IEDM paper, $1B CapEx

Junko Yoshida, EETimes
3/21/2017 01:59 PM EDT

LYON, France — Apple’s upcoming iPhone 8 — allegedly featuring a “3D camera” — has been the subject of intense speculation among the media and the financial community for months.

The dots in this puzzle that have yet to be connected are the explicit relationships among the iPhone 8, single photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) and a company in Europe — STMicroelectronics.

Obviously, any connection that would identify Apple as an ST customer is one that ST wouldn't touch with a ten-foot diode. ST, ergo, is mum.

However, Yole Développement, a Lyon-based market research firm with strong focus on technology analysis, recently drew an almost unbroken line from dot to dot. Yole’s educated guess is that ST is bringing a brand new 3D (array) imager to Apple iPhone 8 — an innovation that will alter the phone’s user interface.

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