sonki & all : LU / MOT team up - WSJ article - June2,98
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Motorola, Lucent Team Up
To Design New DSP Chips
Dow Jones Newswires
NEW YORK -- Lucent Technologies Inc. and Motorola Inc. Tuesday announced a research partnership to develop next-generation digital signal processor products, the specialized chips used to run wireless phones, modems and other audio and video devices.
The two will collaborate on designs but will sell the products separately. The companies will create a joint design center in Atlanta which is set to be open by the third quarter. They also will cross-license each other's latest DSP designs.
"We really believe that for each company to have access to all ideas has significant implications for the industry as a whole," said Lucent. The new designs are expected to be available in a year, said Motorola, which expects the DSP market to reach $15 billion by the year 2002.
DSPs, which analyze sound and light waves, are a fast-growing sector of the semiconductor industry, with sales this year expected to rise 30% to about $4 billion. The market is dominated by Texas Instruments Inc., with a 45% share, and Lucent with a 28% share. Analog Devices Inc. and Motorola are tied for third with 12% shares.
Analog in April unveiled a speedy DSP that it predicts will shake up the market and find wide application in digital speakers, smart airbags and speech-recognition systems. Last fall, Billions of Operations Per Second Inc., a company set up by former International Business Machines Corp. engineers, announced it had developed a design that could sharply advance the speed of DSPs. BOPS aims to license its technology to DSP manufacturers.
DSP chips produce "surround sound" in stereos and headphones, speed up computer hard drives and improve Internet communications. In coming years, the chip will have many other uses, such as reducing noise in vacuum cleaners or controlling power steering in cars. Though DSPs are much cheaper than personal-computer microprocessors, they have fatter profit margins than many chips.
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In view of the importance of DSPs, it will be interesting to know the DSP component as % of sales of TXN, LU and MOT.
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