Sharp and TI cut time to market with turnkey reference design for GSM/GPRS camera phones.

Sharp Corporation and Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) (NYSE:TXN) have announced they will combine their respective strengths to provide a reference design for GSM/GPRS camera phones, significantly cutting the necessary design time and resources required by manufacturers to introduce new camera handsets into market.

This reference design will combine Sharp's 1 Mega Pixel CCD camera module, flash memory and liquid crystal module (LCD), together with TI's TCS2100 chipset for GSM/GPRS cell phones and TI's OMAP-DM270 multimedia processor. The reference design also supports high level video including Nancy Technology from Office NOA and MPEG-4 standards. In addition, TI and Sharp will work together on the development of related software and technical support.

With this reference design, handset manufacturers can offer GSM/GPRS cell phones with camera and video mail functions, which provide high growth potential for a timely market launch. The two companies plan to offer the reference design by the end of 2003 to handset manufacturers worldwide. Analyst firm IDC projects year-on-year growth of more than 80 percent for the camera phone market over the next two years.

Sharp is a top supplier of camera modules and LCD for cellular phones and is spearheading advancements, such as color LCD and camera functions in cellular phones. In order to optimize its camera modules, Sharp leverages its proprietary high-density, multi-chip mount technology to integrate image sensors, lenses and signal processing integrated circuits (IC) to create more compact, slimmer devices.

TI, the world's number one supplier of GSM/GPRS baseband chips, is a leader in the applications processor market with its OMAP family of high-performance processors. The OMAP-DM270 is an extension to TI's widely adopted OMAP portfolio and is the first in the OMAP-DM product line of multimedia processors. The OMAP-DM270 processor is a highly efficient, single-chip digital media processor that integrates the low-power TMS320C54x digital signal processor (DSP), the ARM7TDMI RISC processor, plus video and imaging coprocessors to improve performance. When coupled with TI's TCS wireless chipsets, the flexible OMAP-DM270 is an ideal solution for feature phones, a high-growth market segment that demands multimedia functionality but does not require a high level operating system.