Profile: Kopin Corp (KOPN.O)

Kopin Corporation, incorporated in 1984, is a developer and manufacturer of III-V products and miniature flat panel displays. The Company uses its semiconductor material technology to design, manufacture and market its III-V and display products. The Company products enable its customers to develop and market a generation of products for applications in wireless and consumer electronic products. The Company commercially develops and manufactures Gallium Arsenide-based heterojunction bipolar transistor wafers (HBT transistor wafers) and other commercial semiconductor products that use Gallium Nitride and Gallium Arsenide-based substrates. The Company operates in two segments: Kopin US, which includes the operations in the United States and the Company’s equity method investments, and Kowon.

The Company collectively refers to its products based on compound semiconductor materials, which primarily consists of its HBT transistor wafers, as its III-V products because it uses elements categorized on the III and V columns of the periodic table of elements to manufacture such products. Its HBT transistor wafers are customer-specific arrays of vertically oriented transistors that its customers use primarily to produce integrated circuits for wireless communications products. Sales of its HBT transistor wafers to Skyworks Solutions, Inc (Skyworks Solutions) accounted for approximately 20% of its total revenues for fiscal year ended December 27, 2008. The Company has retained a 28% interest in KoBrite as of December 27, 2008.

III-V Products

The Company manufactures its HBT transistor wafers using its metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) semiconductor growth techniques and its Wafer Engineering process. This transistor structure enables the design of integrated circuits, in which individual transistors are vertically arranged. The Company also offers customers HBT transistor wafers based on indium gallium phosphide and gallium nitride vertical layer structures. In addition to wireless handset power amplifiers, its HBT transistor wafers are also being used in the fabrication of power amplifiers for devices, which communicate using wireless fidelity integrated circuits. Its HBT transistor wafers are also used in fiber optic switching. During the fiscal year ended December 27, 2008 (during 2008), the Company’s III-V products accounted for 41% of its revenues.

The Company competes with IQE, V-PEC, Hitachi Cable, RF Micro Devices and Fujitsu.

CyberDisplay Products

The Company’s principal CyberDisplay products are miniature color or monochrome active matrix liquid crystal displays (LCDs) with resolutions, which range from approximately 320 x 240 resolution to 1280 x 1024 resolution. In contrast to passive matrix and active matrix LCD approaches, its CyberDisplay products utilize single crystal silicon the same quality silicon used in conventional integrated circuits. The Company sells CyberDisplay products to its commercial customers as a single component; a unit which includes a lens and backlight (referred to as an electronic view finder (EVF)); or as a complete module, which includes the display, lens, backlight and electronics, which are assembled in a plastic housing (referred to as a binocular display module (BDM)).

The Company provides its CyberDisplay products to Samsung, Olympus, Fuji and Kodak for use in digital camcorders and cameras. It also sells CyberDisplay products to the United States military and certain foreign governments. These products, which are referred to as higher level assemblies (HLAs), include a display, lens, backlight, electronics and an eye cup in either a plastic or metal housing. During the fiscal year ended December 27, 2008, sales to military customers, excluding research and development contracts, accounted for a 32% of its revenues. During 2008, research and development revenues, primarily from multiple contracts with various United States Governmental agencies, accounted for approximately 6%, of its total revenues.

The Company competes with Sharp, Hitachi, Seiko, Toshiba, Sony, NEC and Sanyo.