SiRF Technology and Matsushita Electric Works Announce Broad Alliance to Develop and Market a Wide Range of GPS-Enabled Products

SiRF Technology, Inc. and Matsushita Electric Works today forged a far-reaching alliance that will include location-enabling a broad range of new wireless, consumer electronic, automotive and mobile computing products based on SiRF’s new SiRFstar IIe/LP chip set and SiRFLoc technology.

These products will be marketed and sold worldwide. The alliance calls for joint developments and marketing cooperation for products based on the SiRFstarIIe/LP and SiRFLoc, a high-sensitivity software platform that improves GPS location capability in standalone and wireless system environments. Some of these products will be used with the NTT DoCoMo Location Platform (DLP), one of the world’s largest carriers. In addition, MEW will develop SiRF-enabled GPS accessories for mobile computing and consumer SiRF Technologies and Matsushita Electric Works Announce Broad Alliance platforms, and GPS modules to sell in the Japanese automotive market.

Finally, MEW has become a strategic investor in SiRF through SiRF’s latest round of financing. MEW has dedicated a sizable group to developing and marketing these GPS-enabled products said Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing at SiRF. That a company of MEW’s size and caliber is investing heavily in SiRFstar architecture-based GPS products is further validation that location awareness is hitting mainstream markets; we anticipate accelerated adoption from this point forward.

We chose SiRF to location-enable our products because of the company’s broad product offerings and technical leadership, as well as its specific technologies, such as SiRFLoc, which are optimized for location acquisition in low signal environments, according to Isao Shimada, Director, Member of the Board at MEW. We fully anticipate a productive, wide-ranging alliance for years to come.

New Products MEW’s initial products include a GPS-enabled security phone, a GPS compact flash card, and a GPS SD GPS card. The GPS security phones provide instant access to emergency services for medical and security purposes. The GPS CFC and SD cards can be used to instantly location enable PDA’s, wireless phones or consumer devices such as digital cameras. These products will be shown at the CTIA Show.

Additional products aimed at the wireless, consumer electronics, automotive and mobile computing markets will be introduced over the next nine months. SiRFstar IIeLP Announced today, SiRFStar IIe/LP is based on the SiRFstar II architecture and the previous generation SiRFstar IIe chip set, but offers breakthrough power consumption. Low power consumption directly translates to longer battery life, a critical requirement in portable devices such as cell phones, personal locators, watches, and personal digital assistant attachments. LP also features more microprocessing power than previous GPS chips, eliminating the need for a separate processor and thus dramatically reducing costs for low- to mid-range GPS consumer products.

SiRF Technologies and Matsushita Electric Works Announce Broad Alliance. The underlying SiRFstar II architecture offers a range of product choices, enabling complete GPS functionality that is high performance, yet with a very small footprint, making it an ideal technology for integration into a wide variety of products. With its unique set of features such as SnapStart for quick start-up, SnapLock for fast acquisition and FoliageLock for high sensitivity, the SiRFstar architecture based products provide enhanced GPS-based location information in urban canyons and dense foliage – where traditional GPS architectures have significant problems.

SiRF has also developed a set of technologies to facilitate and optimize GPS integration into specific platforms, such as automobiles, cell phones and personal digital assistants. One such technology, SiRFLoc, offers multimode GPS architecture optimized for integration into devices connected to wireless networks. For more information, on the latest GPS News see hand held gps.

Author Notes:

Marcell Novak contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.handheld-gps-reviews.com.  A wealth of information about Global Positioning Systems for commercial or personal use.