Energy Micro, the energy friendly microcontroller company, has been named Start-up of the Year at the annual Elektra Awards held at the Lancaster Hotel, London. A highpoint of the electronics industry calendar, the Elektra Awards recognise best practice achievements of individuals and companies throughout Europe. Finalists in sixteen different award categories are selected by an independent panel of industry judges, with the winners being announced at the Awards Dinner. Energy Micro President and CEO Geir Førre said: "To be recognised by the European electronics industry in this way is a real honour. Winning this award not much more than a year since we launched our very first product family is a tremendous achievement and is due to a lot of really hard work by the entire Energy Micro team." The company launched its first ultra low power EFM32 Gecko microcontroller family in Q4 2009 and has since released details of its forthcoming entry-level Tiny Gecko microcontroller family. Based on the energy efficient 32-bit ARM® Cortex(TM)-M3 core, the Gecko microcontrollers are capable of consuming a quarter of the energy of other 8-, 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers. Aiming to cut MCU development times by a half, Energy Micro is also to support its microcontrollers by a comprehensive development environment called the Simplicity Studio. It will comprise Energy Micro's own energyAware software tools, code libraries and development kits and a broad range of third party IDE/complier, debug adapter, programmer and RTOS products. www.energymicro.com