ON THE back of growth in its technology business which it claims was over three times the average of the IP industry as a whole, Imagination Technologies' CEO, Hossein Yassaie, has been bigging up the prospects for DAB (digital audio broadcasting).

Yassaie was quoted as saying that "DAB is a train going in one direction and it's going at a good speed. The DAB market is here to stay." He said that media reports it was in trouble were "completely overplayed. They couldn't be further off the truth."

It named mobile phones, MP3-style music players and even dedicated personal navigation devices as candidates for its DAB chips.

The company has high hopes for shipments of chips containing all of its technologies. "Our goal remains to achieve two hundred million annual unit shipments by our partners in the 2010 timeframe," commented Geoff Shingles, Imagination's chairman.

Of course, all these chips aren't DAB related. The company has signed 22 silicon IP core licences to date and made deals with Texas Instruments, NEC Electronics in the first half of its year. In the second half it landed deals with Renesas, and Samsung.

It's star deal is, of course, a IP design win inside Intel's Atom processor. The Atom processor includes Imagination’s Power VR SGX graphics and Power VR VXD multi-standard HD video technologies.

The company’s Pure-branded digital radios continue to win UK market share, too. The company has just released the One Mini combined DAB and FM portable radio which is very competitively priced at £40.

Imagination also says it will be unveiling a number of new items over the next months. µ