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WOLFSON Microelectronics, the manufacturer of chips for many of the world’s must-have electronic devices, sharply narrowed its 2010 losses, indicating that the Scottish firm’s drive into the fast-growing smartphone, gaming and e-book sectors has set it firmly on the road to recovery.

The chief executive, of the Edinburgh-based company, Mike Hickey yesterday also told The Herald he was quite comfortable with expectations that Wolfson would break back into a full-year profit by the end of 2011.

The company very recently has suffered from difficult times in the electronics market and could not bag a major contract of Apple. The firm, yesterday posted pre-tax losses of $11.2 million (£6.9m) for the year upto 2, January compared with a $14.8m loss for the fifty three weeks to January 3, 2009.


However, revenues in the last year went up by thirty percent to $157.3m, compared with $121.3m last time

The company also reported an underlying operating profit of $1.3m for its final quarter which was second consecutive profit quarter, compared with $4.3m loss of the previous year. This is also vindication of its diversification strategy.

The company is no longer dependent on one product. It is building its business all over the electronics sector

Due to a change in product mix and lower prices for volume orders there was a reduction of gross margin seen by Wolfson, but, at the same time, the company has enlarged its market.

Wolfson’s chips can be found in Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader and Samsung’s Galaxy S smartphone. The firm noted that revenue growth in mobile phones was up by fifty two percent smartphones were up by seventy six percent gaming was up one hundred and thirty percent and e-books saw a rise of four hundred percent.