|
Newsletters
|
|
|
|
|
|
WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
iMAT® from SkyCross Helps Drive Global Smartphone Explosion
Viera, FL - April 22, 2009 - SkyCross, a global antenna solutions company, is enabling smartphone manufacturers to reach critical price points and expand the global market from traditional business users to mass-market personal users. iMAT®, the award-winning antenna technology from SkyCross, provides this design freedom by lowering the bill of materials, consolidating RF components, and simplifying integration.
The traditional smartphone is losing ground to new form factors such as touch screens and netbooks. Sleeker designs, new applications, and flat-rate mobile data plans are attracting mass-market users, but their adoption is closely linked to price as consumers limit their spending. The optimistic smartphone forecast from iSuppli[1] calls for 192.3 million units to ship in 2009, an 11.1 percent increase over 2008. SkyCross iMAT antennas reduce the total cost of ownership for a smartphone while offering high performance so device manufacturers can achieve this growth.
"With 3G networks having become prevalent all over the world, smartphones are no longer just for corporate users – they are for consumers too,” said Tina Teng, Senior Analyst for wireless communications at iSuppli. “Consumers increasingly are demanding data-intensive applications that require the kinds of high data speeds supported by 3G networks."
Today’s feature-rich smartphones require as many as five antennas for GSM/CDMA, GPS, mobile video, WiFi, BlueTooth, and more. Next-generation protocols such as WiMAX and LTE are even more invasive because MIMO requires multiple antennas. The SkyCross single-antenna solution saves space inside smartphones and reduces component costs, so smartphone makers can offer “cheap chic” multifunction devices that mass-market users are demanding.
“The growth of the smartphone market segment is fueled by a new group of consumers that are trading in their mid-tier phones for smartphones,” said Chris Morton, CEO of SkyCross. “This group is much more price sensitive than the typical business user, so an innovative solution like iMAT is essential for device manufactures to address this market while continuing to offer superior 3G and 4G performance.”
SkyCross has extensive experience designing and manufacturing antennas for pioneering and bestselling smartphones—from the Haptic and Omnia touch screen models that Samsung introduced at CES 2009 to the Samsung Blackjack II, which Consumer Reports recently named the best smartphone of 2008. iMAT has won several awards including Fierce15, Portable Design Editor’s Choice Innovation of the Year, and EE Times Most Promising Technology Finalist.
About SkyCross
SkyCross (www.skycross.com) is a global wireless company providing antenna solutions to the mobile phone, home entertainment, and computing industries. SkyCross provides high-performance, frequency-agile, protocol-independent antenna technology bundled with RF system-level expertise and responsive regional support. This convenient approach empowers device manufacturers to develop winning consumer electronics products and deliver them to market faster and easier. SkyCross is ISO 9001 certified and supports customers from its full-service facilities in the USA, South Korea, and China.
|
|
|
