Newport Media Closes $30 Million Funding Round Led by New Investor DAG Ventures.Company Will Use Proceeds to Ramp Volume Production of Its Digital Mobile TV Solutions and Meet Growing Customer Demand LAKE FOREST, Calif -- Newport Media, Inc., an innovative fabless semiconductor company A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips. It achieves an advantage by outsourcing the fabrication of the devices to a specialized semiconductor manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry or "fab. supplying products to the mobile broadcast media market, announced today the closing of a $30 million Series C financing round led by new investor DAG Ventures. Previous investors Benchmark Capital Benchmark Capital is a venture capital firm responsible for the early stage funding of some very successful startups, including eBay. In 1995, the firm invested $6.7 million in eBay, which became worth more than $5 billion by the spring of 1999 and resulted in one of Silicon , Global Catalyst Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Pinnacle Ventures, and Venrock Associates joined DAG Ventures in this round. Newport Media has raised more than $66 million to date. "We have been evaluating the mobile TV space for quite some time and have been impressed by Newport Media's ability to develop such an advanced and mature product in such a short amount of time," said John Cadeddu, managing director and partner, DAG Ventures. "This Series C financing will guarantee that Newport Media will have the financial resources necessary to solidify so·lid·i·fy v. so·lid·i·fied, so·lid·i·fy·ing, so·lid·i·fies v.tr. 1. To make solid, compact, or hard. 2. To make strong or united. v.intr. and maintain its leadership position as they transition to high-volume mass production." Newport Media is one of a handful of companies developing highly integrated, system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions designed to support all major mobile TV standards See NTSC, DTV and HDTV. . The company's Sundance H solution enables wireless handsets and mobile digital TV players with dramatically increased viewing time while simultaneously improving key performance metrics Performance metrics are measures of an organizations activities and performance. Performance metrics should support a range of stakeholder needs from customers, shareholders to employees [1]. like sensitivity, channel switching time and interference immunity. Initially aimed at the industry's fastest-growing market segment, Digital Video Broadcasting-Handhelds (DVB-H See mobile TV and DVB. ), the Sundance Series family will also support other popular air interface standards including Terrestrial-Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB T-DMB Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting ), Integrated Services In computer networking, IntServ or integrated services is an architecture that specifies the elements to guarantee quality of service (QoS) on networks. IntServ can for example be used to allow video and sound to reach the receiver without interruption. Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T ISDB-T Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting - Terrestrial ) and MediaFLO. "I am pleased Newport Media has received this sizable financial commitment from both new and existing investment partners," said Mohy Abdelgany, president and chief executive officer, Newport Media. "We have moved quickly to deliver the world's smallest and best performing mobile TV chipset with superior power efficiency, and have engaged with multiple tier-one customers worldwide to help them bring exciting new next-generation mobile TV handsets to market during 2007. This financing will enable us to ramp volume production to our customers while expanding our product portfolio to deliver multi-standard solutions for the rapidly growing digital mobile TV market segment." About Newport Media, Inc. Newport Media is a fabless semiconductor company that develops and sells highly integrated solutions for emerging digital audio and mobile TV broadcast standards. Newport Media has assembled a management and development team with comprehensive system semiconductor experience in wireless handset and digital set-top box The cable TV box that sits on "top" of the TV "set," although it is often located several feet away in an equipment rack. The set-top box descrambles the premium channels and provides a tuner for the higher cable numbers that very old TVs did not support. industries. Newport Media's development team leverages its collective experience in these converging industries to develop broadcast multimedia architectures and IC implementations with unprecedented performance, power consumption, size and cost. For more information, visit www.newportmediainc.com. About Duff Ackerman & Goodrich Ventures ("DAG Ventures") DAG Ventures is a venture capital partnership investing in and helping outstanding entrepreneurs create leading, long-term companies across a range of markets. With roots from the 1980's in cable TV, infrastructure, media, and wireless industries, the partnership today is privileged to work with world-class entrepreneurs as they build tomorrow's leaders in the information technology, energy, and life science sectors. DAG Ventures invests in companies with proven technology, from the prototype stage onward. For more information visit: www.dagventures.com. Newport Media is a trademark of Newport Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Other companies' marks are trademarks of their respective companies. |
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