Major Chinese Brands Select Siano for CMMB Mobile TV

Leading mobile TV chip-maker Siano Mobile Silicon announced recently that its CMMB receiver chip, the SMS1180, has been selected to power CMMB mobile TV for leading Chinese phone-makers ZTE, Tianyu, CEC Telecom and MP3/4 giant AIGO. Together, the design wins position Siano as the leading CMMB chip provider for up to a potential 30 million handsets and 10 million MP3 and MP4 players annually, thus dramatically extending and diversifying the chip-maker’s reach within the Chinese CMMB industry.

Siano will power multiple CMMB mobile phones made by K-Touch (Tianyu), ZTE and CEC Telecom, and a number of MP4/PMP products by AIGO. The newly upgraded CMMB devices, planned for market launch in early 2009, will be fully compliant with the CMMB Conditional Access System (CAS), and with provisioning for the Secure Broadcast System that has been defined as part of CMMB devices by SARFT (The Chinese State Administration for Radio, Film and Television). Conditional Access System – CAS – is meant to enable pay-TV services that will be added in 2009 to the existing CMMB free-to-air channels; and Secure Broadcast System – SBC – is meant to block pirate, unauthorized broadcasting of CMMB signals.

The move by major Chinese brands to offer CMMB Mobile TV is representative of the rising consumer trend for watching TV on-the-go in China and the industry-wide belief that mobile TV will prove the top sales factor for mobile phones during economic recession. Siano’s high performing CMMB receiver chip will enable access to TV content from over around 30 channels, providing first-class picture quality, the lowest possible power consumption levels and exceptional reception; including deep indoor locations and whilst travelling at fast speeds.

The CMMB standard, based on the Chinese homegrown technology known as STiMi (short for Satellite and Terrestrial Interactive Multiservice Infrastructure), is currently deployed in over 100 cities in China including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou with nationwide coverage, supported by the addition of satellite broadcast, planned for 2009.

There are two offerings to Siano's CMMB chipset: the SMS1185 supports antenna diversity – on one single chip – for both the terrestrial UHF signal and the satellite S-band signal. The SMS1180 supports only one antenna per each spectrum band. Both solutions exhibit very high sensitivity, excellent mobility performance, extremely low power consumption and the highest level of component integration. Recently conducted tests by SARFT (the Chinese State Administration for Radio, Film and Television) produced unprecedented results, showing a clear performance advantage of the SMS118X over existing competing solutions. The chip comes bundled with software drivers for Windows XP/Vista, Linux, and Windows Mobile.

Siano Mobile Silicon, www.siano-ms.com.