Silicon Laboratories on Monday introduced a chip designed for cheap cell phones for emerging markets, a move that will pit the chip maker against much larger competitors.
The company, based in Austin, Texas, unveiled the Aerofone chip that combines various functions onto a single piece of silicon, a difficult engineering feat. Those capabilities now lie in several chips in today’s cell phones.
Using Silicon Labs’ new chip would reduce manufacturing costs for handset makers that want to lower the phone cost for consumers. Cheap phones are defined as phones that cost $40 or less to make.
“This level of integration is very difficult,” said Dan Rabinovitsj, vice president and general manager of wireless products at Silicon Labs. Mr. Rabinovitsj, who led the Aerofone project, began designing the chip with three other engineers in August 2002. “We have solved the problem.”
‘[The chip] moves them into the top tier because of the technology.’
-Will Strauss,
Forward Concepts
Aerofone enables a cell phone to convert and process signals, and the chip also regulates power use to prolong battery life. Those functions would typically be found in separate chips in today’s phones that can make calls, send email, and take photos and videos.
By cramming all those capabilities onto a chip, Aerofone engineers had to give up some functions. Aerofone is good mostly for making calls. But that type of phone is precisely what handset makers are building for developing countries such as India and China.
Handset makers are expected to ship about 222 million of those cell phones this year, said Gartner. The market could grow to 257 million in 2008.
Article courtesy of Red Herring (click for full article)
