Himax Technologies

Himax Technologies
Information
Type	Public company
Industry	Fabless semiconductors, display driver ICs, LCoS microdisplays, wafer level optics, image sensing
Founded	2001
Headquarters	Tainan, Taiwan
Notable Personnel	Biing-Seng Wu (chairman), Jordan Wu (president and CEO), Jessica Pan (CFO)
Products	Display driver ICs, timing controllers, LCoS microdisplays, wafer level optics, CMOS image sensors, 3D sensing modules, WiseEye AI sensing processors
Website	https://www.himax.com.tw

Himax Technologies (Himax Technologies, Inc., Nasdaq: HIMX) is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Tainan. Most of its revenue comes from display driver ICs for TVs, monitors, laptops, phones and car displays, but it also makes timing controllers, liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) microdisplays, wafer level optics (WLO), 3D sensing modules and low-power AI image sensing chips. In its annual report the company describes its WLO, LCoS and 3D sensing technologies as "critical enablers of emerging AR/VR and other next-generation applications."

Himax's LCoS subsidiary, Himax Display, supplied the microdisplay used in Google Glass, and in 2013 Himax announced that Google would take a minority stake in that subsidiary. In 2016 Himax shipped LCoS panels and WLO parts in volume to a "major AR customer" that it never named. Trade press and display analyst Karl Guttag linked that customer to Microsoft's HoloLens headset. Since 2023 it has marketed front-lit LCoS microdisplays for see-through AR glasses, shown with waveguides from partners including Vuzix and AUO.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Company history, subsidiaries, 2025 financials, officers, AR customer disclosures and LCoS/WLO/WiseEye product claims checked against Himax 20-F/F-1/6-K filings, Himax press releases, TechCrunch, iFixit, EE Times Asia, MSPoweruser and KGOnTech. About review dates.

History

Founding and listing

Himax's predecessor, Himax Taiwan, was incorporated on 12 June 2001 in the Republic of China and began operating that month. In 2005 the group was reorganized under a Cayman Islands holding company, which took the name Himax Technologies, Inc. on 26 September 2005, because Taiwanese law did not allow a company that was not listed in Taiwan to list its shares overseas. At the time of its initial public offering, the TFT-LCD panel maker Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) was one of Himax's largest shareholders and had been its largest customer since its founding; CMO and Chunghwa Picture Tubes, with their affiliates, accounted for about 58.9% and 16.2% of 2005 revenue. The prospectus already named LCoS products as a line the company was expanding into, and said that end products such as near-to-eye applications, rear projection TVs and mini projectors could become a large market for them.

Himax priced its initial public offering of 52,000,000 American depositary shares at US$9.00 each on 31 March 2006, and its ADSs have traded on Nasdaq under the symbol HIMX since that date. Innolux, the panel maker formed from CMO's 2010 merger with Innolux Display and TPO, sold its Himax shares in a secondary offering that closed on 19 June 2013, after which it was no longer a Himax shareholder.

Acquisitions and subsidiaries

Himax bought Wisepal, a maker of LTPS TFT-LCD drivers, in February 2007 and set up Himax Imaging for CMOS image sensors in March 2007. In July 2012 Himax Display acquired Spatial Photonics, a MEMS company that became Himax Display (USA). Himax bought the machine vision sensor developer Emza Visual Sense in June 2018 and sold it in October 2022. On 16 November 2015 Himax invested US$1.78 million in Liqxtal Technology, a developer of liquid crystal lenses, for a 64% stake; its annual report said the deal would strengthen its position in head-mounted displays. As of 28 February 2026, Himax held 92.0% of Himax Display, which designs, manufactures and sells its LCoS and MEMS products, and 59.5% of Liqxtal.

Google Glass and Himax Display

On 22 July 2013 Himax announced that Google would take a 6.3% stake in Himax Display, with an option to buy more preferred shares within a year that could raise its holding to 14.8%. Himax kept 81.5%; other Himax Display shareholders included Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures and Intel. The terms were not disclosed, and the money was to fund production upgrades and more capacity. Before Glass shipped, Karl Guttag had argued from a frame-by-frame analysis of a Google video from September 2012 that its display was a field-sequential color LCoS device, "most likely made by Himax". Himax later listed Google Glass among the devices that had used its LCoS microdisplays.

The HoloLens years

Himax said its LCoS business reached an "inflection point in September 2015 with pilot production shipment made to a major customer." In January 2016 it said it was increasing shipments of LCoS microdisplays and WLO products for several customers' AR devices, and that it had won design-ins in the next-generation panels of VR devices from two VR companies. Its first-quarter 2016 results noted shipments to "a major U.S. customer who has recently started shipping their new AR devices", and the company said it had more than 30 customers using its LCoS or WLO in AR devices and optical engine designs.

In November 2016 chief executive Jordan Wu warned that LCoS and WLO sales would decline from the fourth quarter of 2016, "primarily due to our major AR customer's shift in focus to the development of future generation devices." MSPoweruser wrote that Himax was "believed to be supplying important elements of the Microsoft HoloLens", and Guttag wrote that the HoloLens used two Himax field-sequential color LCoS microdisplays. In the same post Guttag cited reports, attributed to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, that Magic Leap was also using Himax LCoS; these were analyst reports, not statements by either company. Himax's 2017 annual report said its non-driver revenue fell that year mainly because LCoS and WLO shipments to "a major AR customer" were discontinued.

Recent years

Himax reported revenue of US$832.2 million for 2025, 8.2% less than in 2024; non-driver products, which include LCoS, WLO, timing controllers and image sensors, made up 20.0% of the total. It had 2,238 employees at the end of 2025. In 2026 the company named smart glasses as one of its main growth areas, pointing to both its LCoS microdisplays and its WiseEye low-power AI sensing chips.

XR work

LCoS microdisplays

Himax Display makes color-filter, color-sequential, front-lit and phase modulation LCoS panels, and operates its own LCoS fab with an ISO-certified liquid crystal assembly line. The company says it has shipped more than 4 million LCoS units since 2012, for AR glasses, automotive AR head-up displays, LiDAR and optical communication. In its competitor list for LCoS it names OmniVision, Syndiant, Kopin and Raontech, along with makers of other microdisplay types: Texas Instruments (DLP), Sony (micro OLED) and JBD (micro LED). Himax's 2014 and 2021 press releases put the LCoS line's proven shipping record at up to 300,000 units per month.

The front-lit design, first shown at SID Display Week in June 2014, puts the LED illumination and the polarization beam splitter inside the microdisplay module so that the optical engine around it can be smaller and simpler. Himax quoted more than 10,000 nits for that first version. A 0.22-inch front-lit module won the 2015 Taiwan Outstanding Photonics Product Award from the Photonics Industry and Technology Development Association. In 2021 Himax showed phase modulation LCoS used as a holographic display in an automotive head-up display with two focal planes, at 50 cm and about 10 meters.

From 2023 Himax promoted color-sequential front-lit panels for AR glasses that use waveguides with two-dimensional exit pupil expansion. The figures below are Himax's own claims from its announcements:

Year	Event	Himax's stated specifications
2023	Display Week 2023	Color-sequential front-lit LCoS; total volume about 0.5 cc; up to 100K nits; aimed at waveguides with more than 50 degrees field of view
2024	CES 2024	Up to 180K nits; volume as small as 0.5 c.c.; more than 140% sRGB; demo goggles with a 40-degree waveguide, up to 500 nits to the eye
2025	CES 2025	400K nits at a typical 300 mW; less than 0.5 c.c.; prototype glasses with third-party waveguide above 1,000 nits to the eye
2025	Display Week 2025	Dual-edge front-lit; 720x720, 4.25 micrometer pixel pitch; 0.09 c.c., 0.2 g; targeting up to 350,000 nits and 1 lumen at 250 mW maximum total power
2026	CES 2026 (with AUO)	720x720; 200 mW; up to 350,000 nits; 0.09 c.c. and 0.21 g without collimator, 0.34 c.c. and 0.79 g with one
2026	Display Week 2026	Full on/full off contrast raised from 250:1 to 450:1, above 1000:1 with Dynamic Light Modulation; 200 mW

Waveguide partnerships

Himax and Lumus announced a collaboration on consumer smart glasses in August 2014. The release said the two companies had already worked together for several years on helmet-mounted displays for combat aviation. At Display Week in May 2025, Himax and Vuzix showed a module that combined the dual-edge front-lit LCoS with a Vuzix waveguide 0.7 mm thick with a 30-degree diagonal field of view; the companies said the co-design was scheduled for commercial release at the end of 2025. At CES 2026 the two showed a prescription-ready reference design pairing the HX7319FL color-sequential front-lit LCoS (a 720x720 panel in a 0.34 c.c., 0.79 g projector module) with a Vuzix waveguide, supporting configurations from a 30-degree field of view to more than 1,000 nits. The same show included a front-lit LCoS paired with a waveguide from the Taiwanese display maker AUO. Himax said in 2026 that it was working with waveguide partners in Asia, Europe and North America.

Wafer level optics and 3D sensing

Himax makes wafer level optics, including refractive lenses and diffractive optical elements, in its own Tainan facility; small-scale WLO shipments started in December 2009. The WLO line's sales in 2016 rose with the LCoS business on shipments to the same unnamed AR customer. In its 2025 annual report the company said it began volume production of WLO for "a leading North American customer" in 2023, used for controller-free 3D gesture control in that customer's VR devices; it did not name the customer. A System Plus Consulting teardown of the LiDAR scanner in Apple's 2020 iPad Pro 11, reported by EE Times Asia, found a diffractive optical element from Himax on top of the VCSEL emitter. Himax also sells structured light and time-of-flight 3D sensing modules and decoder ICs, which it lists for uses including eye tracking and hand-gesture control.

VR displays and sensing chips

Himax display chips appear in VR hardware too. iFixit's 2013 teardown of the Oculus Rift DK1 found a Himax HX8851 timing controller on the back of its LCD. At CES 2025 Himax and Ganzin Technology showed the Aurora IIS eye tracking module for AR and AI glasses and VR headsets; it runs Ganzin's tracking algorithm on Himax's WiseEye2 processor with a 30 Hz gaze sampling rate and, by the companies' account, sub-1-degree accuracy in the center of the field of view. On 14 October 2026 Himax announced that its WiseEye HX6538 processor is used for always-on visual sensing in Alibaba's Qwen Glasses N1 series, with a stated power draw of 5 mW.

See also

• Liquid crystal on silicon
• Microdisplay
• Google Glass
• Microsoft HoloLens
• Kopin Corporation
• Jade Bird Display