Automotive Mobile Audio Video

INGOLSTADT, Germany -- In Europe last week for the kick-off of commercial mobile TV services and for the introduction of handsets using its tuner, Microtune(R), Inc. President and CEO James A. Fontaine revealed the company's product strategy to meet the needs of worldwide mobile/portable TV manufacturers for future radio frequency (RF) electronics.

"Leveraging our patented MicroTuner(TM) architecture, coupled with our market leadership in silicon TV tuner-chips and digital TV expertise, our product plan is to develop new multi-standard, poly-band, universal TV tuners that can help drive the development of the global market for mobile and portable TV," said Mr. Fontaine.

"We expect the commercial rollouts for the 2006 FIFA World Cup to serve as an excellent proving ground for mobile TV services. They will rigorously test the entire broadcasting system, while spurring interest, demand and deployments. We are proud that our DVB-H tuner technology is deployed in the LG Electronics' LG-U900 handsets that will be used in the Italian Hutchison (3) launch. As additional mobile TV networks are introduced worldwide, we believe that multiple mobile TV standards, as with other digital TV standards, will co-exist across regions or countries. We intend to support these multiple standards with our advanced tuner technology.

"Our goal is to provide high-performance tuners to as wide a market as possible, while permitting our customers to cost effectively develop multi-market end products. In the process, we expect to solidify a leadership position as the preferred RF supplier to major consumer electronics manufacturers."

According to Mr. Fontaine, Microtune plans to expand upon its existing ATSC, DVB-T and DVB-H-based products to develop universal tuners. They will be engineered as miniature single chips that support multiple mobile TV standards, while also easily enabling compact dual-tuner configurations for personal video recording and diversity applications. Anticipating the convergence of digital TV broadcast, multimedia and connectivity as part of the evolution of handsets and portable devices, the company also plans to investigate strategies to bridge its current tuner portfolio with expanded RF functions.

As the first initiative in its strategy, Microtune plans to expand its Mobile MicroTuner product family for the DVB-T, DVB-H, T-DMB, ISDB-T and DMB-TH specifications. When implemented into consumer multimedia devices, the new tuners will enable users to access a variety of content -- digital TV broadcasts, mobile TV broadcasts, digital radio and teletext -- while roaming across countries that offer differing standards.

Combining standards with expanded RF functions, Microtune expects that its future tuners will permit manufacturers to develop products for global markets without the added expense and duplication of effort to design standard- or feature-specific devices. They will help to accelerate a customer's time-to-market and reduce costly development investments, while maintaining the very high level of RF performance and silicon integration associated with current Microtune products.

"With the continuation of worldwide field trials, the emergence of competitive specifications such as T-DMB, and most significantly, the first launch of commercial DVB-H services in Italy, the emerging TV-on-mobile devices market is dynamically moving forward," said Paul O'Donovan, Principal Research Analyst, Semiconductor Group, Gartner Dataquest.

"Italy will prove a tipping point. The experience of Hutchison (3) in delivering mobile TV services in Rome, Milan, Turin and other cities will serve as both a test case and learning experience, identifying the interest of consumers, the appeal of content, the ruggedness of the broadcast system, the new capabilities in the mobile phones and, most importantly, the validity of the business model," O'Donovan added. "A key criteria of initial success will be quality of the TV reception. Consumers know what TV looks like, and the new DVB-H mobile phones will need to deliver high-quality, consistent TV pictures on the small LCD screens."

As examples of Microtune's successful multi-standard approach, Mr. Fontaine cited the recently announced Mobile MicroTuner MT2266, a dual-standard (DVB-T and DVB-H), dual-band (UHF and VHF-Band III) chip that receives and tunes both digital terrestrial TV and mobile broadcast TV signals. Microtune's first Mobile MicroTuner product, the MT2260, was the industry's first multi-band (UHF/L-Band) DVB-H tuner to be introduced, sampled and put into production. This chip is currently deployed in LG's LG-U900 mobile phone.

# posted by Medical Information : 6:01 AM