Infineon Speeds Up Design Cycles of Next-Generation UMTS Mobile Phones by Up to 30 Percent

Nov 15, 2005 | Market News

Munich, Germany / Hong Kong – November 15, 2005 – Infineon Technologies AG (FSE/NYSE: IFX) today, at the 3G World Congress & Exhibition 2005 in Hong Kong, announced the availability of its latest multimedia mobile phone reference design platform. Infineon’s MP-EU platform enables mobile phone manufacturers to speed up introduction of next-generation UMTS phones by up to 30 percent from today’s 14 months on average. The MP-EU is the industry’s most integrated platform supporting UMTS, EDGE and GSM/GPRS cellular standards. Its intelligent scalability concept allows mobile phone manufacturers to smoothly evolve from 2G/2.5G phones to 2.75G and 3G phones as well as to easily adapt to design trends, since basic hardware and software components within the platform remain unchanged.
 
Using Infineon’s scalable platform MP-EU enables mobile phone manufacturers to quickly introduce a variety of UMTS models all based on the same core architecture, such as voice and data centric UMTS phones for business users and entertainment-centric UMTS phones for juvenile users. Furthermore, mobile phone manufacturers using Infineon’s GSM/GPRS platform benefit from easy migration to EDGE/UMTS dual mode phones and improved time to market by reuse of applications. Subject to complexity as well as additional functionalities to be implemented, the development cycle is likely to be reduced by up to 30 percent. UMTS phones incorporating Infineon’s MP-EU platform provide extensive mobile phone multimedia functionality, such as video streaming and video telephony compliant with the requirements in Europe, Asia, Japan and North America.
 
The MP-EU platform offers the industry’s highest-integration. At present, an UMTS phone needs around 300 to 450 electronic components. With Infineon’s highly integrated UMTS platform the number is reduced to below 200. MP-EU includes Infineon’s powerful S-GOLD2 baseband processor which obsoletes the necessity for an additional companion chip to deal with the highly complex processing needs such as modem- video and audio-data-processing on-chip The MP-EU platform supports all frequency bands for GSM/GPRS/EDGE and all six frequency bands specified for UMTS.
 
Market research company Strategy Analytics expects the number of UMTS mobile phones sold to grow from about 45 million in the year 2005 to approximately 412 million in 2010, amounting for an annual growth rate of about 55 percent over the next five years.
 
“Infineon ranks among the leading suppliers of semiconductor solutions for mobile phones with a strong track record in GSM and EDGE solutions,” said Clemens Jargon, Vice President and General Manager of the Feature Phone business unit at Infineon Technologies AG. “It is our goal to enable world-class 3G mobile phones and to provide mobile phone manufacturers with reference designs optimized for performance, power consumption, size, as well as ease-of-development. We expect to see UMTS handsets incorporating our MP-EU platform in the market in mid-2006.”
 
Technical information on MP-EU reference design platform
 
The MP-EU platform provides a broad variety of connectivity technologies, such as Bluetooth, Assisted GPS and WLAN. Next to the powerful S-GOLD2 baseband processor, highly integrated ICs like a power management single-chip and radio frequency (RF) transceivers, the SMARTi PM for GPRS/EDGE and the SMARTi 3G for UMTS, comprise this most advanced UMTS platform. MP-EU enables easy migration from mobile phones based on Infineon’s EDGE platform to UMTS phones.
 
The S-GOLD2 includes all hardware accelerators to enable next-generation UMTS applications, such as video streaming and video telephony, 3D gaming, data download, etc.
 
The SMARTi 3G is world’s first CMOS single-chip RF transceiver supporting all six frequency bands for UMTS defined for Europe, Asia, North America and Japan.
 
MP-EU is available now. An extensive dual mode modem test program demonstrates that the platform fulfils the standard 3GPP requirements. The test program includes testing of the protocol stack according to the GSM Certification Forum (GCF) requirements, infrastructure interoperability testing (IOT) with all major mobile network vendors and a worldwide field test program in 54 live networks.
 
Infineon will be present at 3G World Congress & Exhibition 2005 (16 - 18 November 2005, Hong Kong) at booth 1831 in hall 1 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
 
Additional information on Infineon’s MP-EU platform is available at www.infineon.com/mp-eu , an overview about Infineon’s mobile solutions at www.infineon.com/wireless.

About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for automotive, industrial and multimarket sectors, for applications in communication, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates through its subsidiaries in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In fiscal year 2004 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 7.19 billion with about 35,600 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com

Information Number

INFCOM200511.011

Press Photos

  • English: The MP-EU is the industry's most integrated platform supporting UMTS, EDGE and GSM/GPRS cellular standards. Its intelligent scalability concept allows mobile phone manufacturers to smoothly evolve from 2G/2.5G phones to 2.75G and 3G phones as well as to easily adapt to design trends, since basic hardware and software components within the platform remain unchanged.<br><br>Deutsch: MP-EU ist die industrieweit höchstintegrierte Referenz-Plattform und unterstützt die Mobilfunk-Standards UMTS, EDGE, GPRS und GSM. Ihre modulare und skalierbare Architektur ermöglicht den reibungslosen Umstieg von 2G/2,5G-Mobilfunkstandards auf 2,75/3G-Mobilfunkstandards. Darüber hinaus lassen sich Mobiltelefone, die auf der MP-EU Plattform basieren, in kürzester Zeit auf neue Design-Trends anpassen, da die Basis-Hardware und -Software der Plattform unverändert eingesetzt werden kann.
    English: The MP-EU is the industry's most integrated platform supporting UMTS, EDGE and GSM/GPRS cellular standards. Its intelligent scalability concept allows mobile phone manufacturers to smoothly evolve from 2G/2.5G phones to 2.75G and 3G phones as well as to easily adapt to design trends, since basic hardware and software components within the platform remain unchanged.

    Deutsch: MP-EU ist die industrieweit höchstintegrierte Referenz-Plattform und unterstützt die Mobilfunk-Standards UMTS, EDGE, GPRS und GSM. Ihre modulare und skalierbare Architektur ermöglicht den reibungslosen Umstieg von 2G/2,5G-Mobilfunkstandards auf 2,75/3G-Mobilfunkstandards. Darüber hinaus lassen sich Mobiltelefone, die auf der MP-EU Plattform basieren, in kürzester Zeit auf neue Design-Trends anpassen, da die Basis-Hardware und -Software der Plattform unverändert eingesetzt werden kann.
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