CSR no longer depends on cellular

BLUETOOTH CHIP specialist, CSR, said less than 50 per cent of its business came from cellular in 2006. Yet it is still supplying almost one in every two top handsets.

Non-cellular products which feature CSR's Bluetooth technology include the Playstion 3, an MP3 player and a plasma TV from Samsung.

Indeed in 2006, 43 per cent of all qualified Bluetooth products were in the non-cellular sector - according to data listed on the official Bluetooth SIG website.

Data provided by IMS shows the overall Bluetooth market overall grew from 310 to 320 million units in 2005 to over 500 million units in 2006.

The company also reckons that GPS will contribute to its profits in 2007. It claims that integrating GPS into its Bluetooth silicon "will ultimately provide an embedded GPS solution for mobile handsets with a cost adder of less than $1."

The GPS capability came through its acquisition of Cambridge Positioning Systems and NordNav Technologies.

Headsets is another area where CSR says it is winning with 84 of all design wins in 2006. A reference design based on its BlueVOX QFN chip makes a $6 bill of materials for all the electronic bit possible when producing a Bluetooth headset, CSR says.

High end headsets also benefit from CSR's on-chip DSP architecture in its BlueCore5-Multimedia chip.

Still, CSR is attracting competition from both Texas Instruments and Broadcom, so expect the Bluetooth sector to hot up. µ

L'INQ
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