Chip makers support mobile TV for smartphones
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(InfoWorld) - Smartphone users will be able to watch broadband television and snap high-resolution photos on their handsets in 2007 thanks to new processor and memory chips launched at theÂ 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. Together with dropping prices, these chips will help spread smartphones from high-end business users to a larger mass-market audience, according to hardware component manufacturers attending the 3GSM show. Camera phones will get a boost in power by using high-resolution image sensors from Micron Technology. The company's new MT9-series sensors use a 1.75-micron pixel design in resolutions of up to 5 megapixels. The top-shelf version, MT9P012, captures video at 60 frames per second at 720p resolution or 30 fps at 1080p and will be ready for sampling in the second quarter of 2007 with mass production by the middle of the year. Likewise, OmniVision Technologies announced a 5.17-megapixel camera module for mobile handsets using the OV5623 CameraChip sensor. That sensor will help high-resolution camerasÂ enter the mainstream mobile handset market, the company said. To store those large photo files, SanDisk announced it had developed a high-capacity version of its iNAND embedded flash drive, capable of holding up to 8GB of data. The new drives are now compliant with JEDEC (joint electron device engineering council) standards, allowing phone vendors to use them in designs that demand enough storage for mobile TV, multimedia downloading, digital audio players, gaming, and GPS. Also supporting mobile television, Qualcomm said that its UBM (Universal Broadcast Modem) chip would ship ahead of schedule, delivering mobile TV capability to mass-market handsets. A single UBM chip contains three technology standards, including FLO technology, digital video broadcasting for handhelds, and integrated service digital broadcasting-terrestrial. Qualcomm also said it would boost mobile broadband by the end of 2007 by launching the Mobile Data Modem 8200, a chipset supporting the next generation of WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access). A smartphone using that chip could support mobile Internet browsing, real-time location services, and multimedia sharing, the company said. To support these capabilities without driving up retail prices, vendors say they need to increase the market size, so another feature of many chips launched at 3GSM was low cost. Broadcom launched its EDGE processor, integrating a radio frequency transceiver, baseband functions, and multimedia connectivity support on a single chip. That design lets phone vendors create slimmer designs, reduce power consumption, and control costs, Broadcom said. Likewise, Qualcomm said its Mobile Station Modem (MSM) 7225 chipset would allow vendors to sell broadband-capable smartphones for less than $200. The chipset uses a dual-processor architecture for high-speed downlink packet access. The company will ship samples in the third quarter of 2007 and expects vendors to bring it to market by the first quarter of 2008. Microsoft said it had another way to open up larger markets for smartphones, adding desktop-quality features to handsets, such as VoIP calls and faster e-mail traffic with higher-quality graphics. Microsoft launchedÂ Windows Mobile 6, its latest OS for mobile handsets, and said it expected a crop of smartphones using the OS to reach market in March or April. Marvell Technology Group pledged to help that migration by announcing it would support the new OS on its PXA300-series processors. Those chips were formerly known as "Monahans" until Marvell bought the division from Intel in 2006. Â
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What happens when you take the powerful Cell microprocessor, the chip that sits at the heart of the PlayStation 3 games console, and put it to use inside a television? Toshiba is demonstrated just such a TV at this week's International Consumer Electronics Show and the results are impressive.
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Mobintech, a Denmark-based group, believes it has found the solution to the mobile phone industry's problem of trying to offer television and video services on a tiny screen.
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Sony announced that, in partnership with IBM and Toshiba, it is working on developing a Cell chip, which is designed to deliver high-definition content in an efficient manner.
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Upcoming chips will lead to relatively inexpensive hardware, company says.
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Qualcomm announced today a dual entry into the mobile entertainment, or "TV on your phone" market:  its Universal Broadcast Modem (or UBM) chip, and MediaFLO platform for streaming content to mobile devices.
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InfoWorld - Qualcomm is offering mobile phone makers a choice of technologies to tune into mobile TV services. In addition to its MediaFlo broadcast system, the U.S. manufacturer unveiled the development of two new chips supporting alternative technologies at last week&#39;s&#160;3GSM World Congress&#160;in Barcelona.
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Qualcomm is shipping four new wireless chip sets that do not infringe on a video encoding patent held by competitor Broadcom. Qualcomm expects the WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) handsets containing the chips to go on sale in the U.S. by April, it said Wednesday.
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A handful of chip makers showed Monday how a mobile device running Google Inc.'s Android operating system might look.
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A number of chip manufacturers are showing Google's Android software platform for mobile phones running on prototype or proof-of-concept phones at the Mobile World Congress.
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Thanks to a new chip Texas Instruments Inc. is developing, your favorite TV show someday will come to the cell phone nearest to you.
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Technical details of the new low-power mobile CPU, expected to ship this year, are being released at a chip conference this week.
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Graphics card giants ATI and Nvidia are working on new chips to improve the quality of mobile displays.
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I was pretty amazed to see 3D graphics coming to mobile phones, and now it looks like TV is coming to them too! Texas Instruments has started work on a chip that
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NEW YORK - Texas Instruments is to bring live digital television broadcasts to mobile phones for the first time in a development that it claims could revolutionise the industry.
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Samsung Electronics has created an innovative memory chip designed to boost the processing speed in mobile phones for handling digital video and other data-intensive applications.
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New processor may increase battery life and lower prices of video-playing mobile phones.