Texas Instruments Inc (TI), the world's largest mobile-phone chipmaker, believes the evolution of mobile phones into multi-featured consumer electronics will give the market huge potential for the future.
"There remains huge space for development of handsets in the future," David Hsu (
Multi-feature smartphones that are integrated with appealing functions, like wireless local area network (WLAN), global positioning system (GPS), three-dimensional gaming and multimedia, will become the drivers of growth in the handset market in the next few years, he said.
Hsu expects the world's top mobile-phone makers to release five to seven handset models equipped with wireless local area network, or WLAN, capabilities, which enable users to surf the Internet more cheaply and faster than general packet radio service (GPRS) systems.
Under the theme "making wireless," the Dallas, Texas-based company will showcase its latest handset chips, OMAP2, which allow for multimedia and high-end computing functions, in the five-day Computex Taipei beginning next Tuesday.
TI expects a strong year with the release of products that enable multimedia capabilities in smartphones and third-generation handsets, Hsu said.
The company's strong growth will also benefit its local partners, like contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC,
Multi-functional handsets could eat into the digital camera sector, as happened with the personal digital assistant market, as phone makers keep upgrading the capabilities of camera phones, Hsu said.
Global handset shipments could grow from around 500 million units this year to 550 million units next year, boosted by multimedia phones, according to TI.
Multi-featured smartphones are expected to grab one-third to half of total handset shipments between 2006 and 2007, Hsu said.
TI's smaller rival, the Santa Clara, California-based National Semiconductor Corp, is going to exhibit its latest analog technologies for a variety of electronic devices and display technologies for liquid-crystal-display (LCD) televisions, LCD monitors, notebooks and handsets at Computex.
TI posted annual revenues of US$9.83 billion in the year to Dec. 31 and National Semiconductor reported sales of US$1.67 billion in the year ending May 25 last year.
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