SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) sells Ophthalmic Division to Alcon

TELTOW, Germany and BOSTON, November 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

SMI sets focus on new applications for their leading ocular technology and expands leadership in scientific research eye tracking

SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH (SMI), leader in eye tracking, eye control, guidance and registration technology, sells its Ophthalmic Division to Alcon, the global leader in eye care. The acquisition provides Alcon with SMI's leading ocular surgical guidance technology, such as real-time eye tracking, automatic registration of ocular imaging, and intraocular lens (IOL) positioning and alignment guidance, in order to help improve patient outcomes in cataract surgery. SMI will now fully focus its efforts on the rapidly growing opportunities with end users and OEM customers in gaze based interaction, eye tracking applications in other medical areas and to expand their leadership in scientific eye tracking applications.

Alcon plans to integrate the newly acquired ocular surgical guidance technology into its existing global cataract portfolio, and leverage its global leadership in eye care to help bring this advanced technology to surgeons across the world. Alcon offers the industry's most complete line of surgical products for cataract surgery, including equipment for cataract procedures, as well as IOLs to treat cataracts and correct refractive errors, like presbyopia and astigmatism.

"We are proud and glad to have found in Alcon the best possible business partner to develop the potential of our team, technology, and products in cataract surgery", said the former head of the SMI Ophthalmic Division Dr. Oliver Kersting who continues at Alcon to lead the integration of the SMI technology into Alcon's cataract product portfolio. "We know and have been working with Alcon successfully for more than a decade. We have great respect for Alcon's leadership in Ophthalmology and their ability to bring innovations to broad market." said Eberhard Schmidt, Managing Director of SMI. "SMI has been growing very rapidly and faces a dramatically expanding array of opportunities based on our leading technology platform. Multimodal user interaction as well as analytical applications provide great opportunities to bring valuable innovations to scientists, OEM-Partners and end-users that will benefit from our increased focus in this area going forward."

About SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH (SMI)

SMI (http://www.smivision.com) is a world leader in dedicated computer vision applications, developing and marketing eye & gaze tracking systems and OEM solutions for a wide range of applications such as marketing, human-computer-interfaces, ophthalmology, neurology, psychology, ergonomics and usability. SMI serves customers around the globe from offices in Teltow, near Berlin, Germany and Boston, USA, backed by a network of trusted local partners in many countries.

Contact: stefanie.gehrke@smi.de
Name: Stefanie Gehrke
Titel: Market Communication Manager
Phone  : +49(0)3328-3955-00        SensoMotoric Instruments GmbH
Fax    : +49(0)3328-3955-99        Warthest. 21
WEB    : http://www.smivision.com    14513 Teltow
E-Mail : info@smivision.de        Germany

Geschäftsführer / Managing Director: Eberhard Schmidt (Dipl.-Ing., MBA)
Amtsgericht Potsdam HRB 22447 P; VAT-No.: DE 266508899