Telegent ships 100 million mobile TV chips

SUNNYVALE, USA: Telegent Systems, the company that makes television mobile, today announced that it has achieved a key industry milestone with the shipment of its 100 millionth mobile TV receiver last month.

Handsets incorporating Telegent's solutions, which enable reception of live, free-to-air broadcast TV in mobile devices, have been widely adopted by consumers in emerging markets around the world, including Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and India.

"Free-to-air mobile TV is quite popular with emerging market consumers around the world, leading to continuing rapid growth in demand over the last year for analog mobile TV receivers," said Ford Tamer, CEO of Telegent Systems.

Telegent's customers include several global handset manufacturers such as Samsung, ZTE, Tianyu and more than one hundred design houses and original equipment manufacturers in Taiwan and China. Handsets developed by these manufacturers are shipped around the world, with strongest demand in Southeast Asia and Latin America, followed by Africa, the Middle East and India.

This month, Telegent begins sampling a hybrid ISDB-T/analog mobile TV receiver that enables both digital and analog TV reception in handsets, targeting users in Latin America. Telegent is also continuing to drive aggressive innovation in its analog mobile TV receiver product line on dimensions such as picture quality, power consumption and chip size.

"Free-to-air mobile TV receivers continue to dominate the mobile TV landscape through 2014, with analog mobile TV accounting for half of industry shipments," said Will Strauss, principal analyst at industry analyst Forward Concepts. "We estimate annual shipments in 2014 at 198 million units, with three mobile TV standards emerging as the volume leaders – analog, ISDB-T1 and CMMB."

Telegent CEO Tamer offered the following market predictions for 2011 for trends in mobile television:

* The market for analog mobile TV will continue to see significant growth globally, with increasing participation from global handset manufacturers.

* In Latin America, low-cost ISDB-T handset designs will proliferate and will fuel demand for digital mobile TV products in this region.

* In Asia, the Cricket World Cup will drive TV phone adoption as handset brands and operators roll out marketing campaigns geared towards cricket fans.

* Interactive services will increasingly be integrated with mobile TV viewing, opening up revenue opportunities for operators, broadcasters and service providers.