Infineon, Toshiba Develop Interface Compatibility for Mobile Phones

[Berlin, GERMANY] Infineon and Toshiba Corporation Tuesday in Tokyo
that they want to work together to develop the interface compatibility
between the dual-mode UMTS/GSM baseband IC M-GOLD from Infineon and the
MPEG-4
single-chip codec TC35273XB (T3) from Toshiba. T

The goal is the creation
of an integrated solution which enables the transmission and (de)coding
of MPEG-4 video data for the next generation of mobile phones. With this
solution, users will be able to receive and view streaming video data
with their mobile phones, and they will also be able to transmit
streaming video data that has been recorded by a terminal equipped with
a camera.

Infineon and Toshiba will present a prototype construction
with the M-GOLD and the TC35273XB at the GSM World Congress in Cannes
(February 20-23).

Intex Management Services predicts that by the end of 2006 the number of
mobile radio users will have grown to 1.8 billion worldwide. By that
time, half of these users will have taken advantage of 2.5G or 3G
technologies with their corresponding multimedia features. MPEG-4 may be
crucial to the relevant coding and decoding of streaming video data.

According to estimates by the market research company Scottsdale, the
cumulative deliveries of MPEG-4 chips between 2001 and 2003 will amount
to around 30 million units, while in 2004 alone around 60 million units
are expected. The majority of these building blocks will be used in the
mobile telephone market.

G|nter Weinberger, the senior vice president and general manager of
Infineon Technologies’ Wireless Group, said, “The demonstration of a
working system leads the way to a new class of products with web-enabled
mobile phones or hand-held devices that offer fully functional
multimedia capabilities.”

In September 2000, Infineon introduced
M-GOLD, a highly integrated chip for a dual-mode UMTS/GSM baseband
solution. M-GOLD is a dual-mode baseband solution in a single chip, and
it enables the convergence of the second and third generations of mobile
radio devices.

In addition to the UMTS and GSM/GPRS modem technology of
Infineon, the chip also encompasses a broad spectrum of peripheral
functions. With its dual-mode capability, the chip addresses all
UMTS/WCDMA and UMTS/WCDMA/GSM markets.
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