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The new company, named StarCore, will be headquartered in Austin, Texas with a subsidiary office in Tel Aviv, Israel, and is expected to begin operations late summer 2002, subject to regulatory approvals.
DSP cores are a major component in the construction of mobile phones and other electronic devices. They can be thought of as the brain of digital mobile phone, allowing the devices to have custom-made "system-on-chip" features and functions.
Ireland's Parthus is in fact a leader in the development of these devices, selling its DSP designs to mobile phone makers, DSP core producers and semiconductor companies around the world. It recently announced merger with the IP licensing division of Israel's DSP Group to create the newly named ParthusCeva, a company that would have increased capability to license and sell DSP core designs.
"We don't see them as a threat at all," explained Barry Nolan, spokesperson for Parthus. "In fact we see the move as an endorsement of the ParthusCeva open licensing business model." Nolan said that Motorola already had a DSP business and that the new company enters the foray with no extra market share beyond what Motorola is providing.
He further cited what he expected to be StarCore's difficulties in selling new DSP designs to semiconductor making competitors, claiming Parthus' position as an independent IP licensing company offered a better position in the market.
On Tuesday following the announcement, Parthus opened up almost six percent higher on the Nasdaq in the opening minutes of trading to USD3.88.
StarCore will have a separate management team and board of directors, and Motorola said the new business will operate as an independent entity.
"The central goal of the new StarCore is to proliferate world-class DSP core technologies through open licensing," said Thomas Lantzsch, the new chief executive officer of StarCore, LLC. Lantzsch comes to the new company from Motorola's semiconductor products sector, where he was vice president and director of intellectual property value creation.
Lantzsch said the company would not operate as traditional DSP maker do. Instead of basing its models on proprietary DSP technologies for use by just one or two companies, StarCore will license numerous DSP cores to multiple mobile device makers. This, ostensibly, should result in higher levels of performance and miniaturisation while accelerating time to market and lowering overall production costs, Lantzsch claimed.
The news from Motorola follows the firm's announcement earlier this year that saw it team up with STMicroelectronics and Philips Electronics to jointly invest USD1.4 billion over four years in a push for faster, cheaper production of microchips for future electronic devices.
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