Israeli mobile TV chipmaker Siano Mobile Silicon has scored an impressive set of wins in the Brazilian market, to go with its success in China, where it dominates CMMB chips for mobile TV in phones.
It says it has landed deals with all 3 of the top Brazilian operators for devices which contain Siano chips which will receive ISDB-T 1 seg signals ‘ and they will all be pushed hard in the run up to this Summer’s World Cup, a tournament where Brazil has the most impressive record of wins. All three devices are launched in conjunction with China’s ZTE, a handset maker that Siano has done a lot of business with in China.
The three cellular operators Vivo, Claro and TIM Brazil have each launched products using Siano chips, either mobile phones or 3G PC modem cards or both.
The FIFA World Cup is played in Summer 2010 in South Africa, another region that hopes to have a mobile TV service of its own when the games start in June (see separate story in this week’s issue), but which has only just issued invitations to apply for a license. By contrast ISDB-T trial broadcasters began about three years ago in Brazil and the one-seg market is just beginning to take off in time for the soccer tournament.
“We want Brazilians to fully experience the World Cup and be able to watch the games anywhere and anytime,” Hugo Janeba, Executive VP of Marketing and Innovation in Vivo, the largest mobile operator in Brazil, said last week, adding “and when soccer fans have their own pocket TV, the experience certainly becomes much more complete.’
Brazil is leading the roll-out of mobile digital TV services in South America, but its success in finally getting transmissions off the ground after long delays and government intervention, has meant that other countries in the region are queuing to launch their own ISDB-T TV and Mobile TV services. For instance Argentina and Chile, along with other countries including Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador have already decided to follow the standard and Columbia, Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay are all expected to announced a switch to ISDB-T shortly. With the 127 million people in Japan, with already more than 50% with one-seg phones, that means that a population of almost 400 million people will live in regions which have adopted the standard, which makes it important for any company that wants to be a player in Mobile TV chips to have both a design and a design win in South America.
Until recently the US company MaxLinear, had a dominant market share in ISDB-T designs, having partnered with the majority of Japanese handset makers with its designs. MaxLinear has just gone public in April, raising $82.8 million for the company and $20.8 million for selling investors, valuing the business at around $570 million.
‘As one of the largest cellular terminal makers worldwide, ZTE is proud to lead the mobile TV market in Brazil,’ said Zhang Yadong, Manager of Mobile Broadband Device Production at ZTE. ‘Siano has been our major partner for mobile TV terminals, due to their excellent products and support.’