Intel and Motorola join board of directors; enhance openness of MIPI's interface standards

February 6, 2004 /Wi-Fi Technology News/- The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance, the industry initiative established to define and promote open standards for interfaces to mobile application processors, announced this week that the four founding members have been joined by 35 new members, including the addition of Intel and Motorola to the board of directors.

"Our growing membership base sends a clear signal that the mobile industry supports the objectives of our organization," said Tom Vial, Chairman of the Board, MIPI Alliance, Inc. "The diversity of the companies involved leaves little doubt that the MIPI Alliance is an open organization, and the specifications we produce will be widely adopted."

"Developing open interface specifications for application processors and peripherals in mobile terminals will have a beneficial impact on the mobile industry as they become more widely adopted" said Alan Brown, Principal Analyst of Gartner, "The addition of these new companies to the MIPI Alliance clearly increases the importance of the Alliance and its influence in setting standards in this area."

Through expansion of membership to other important players in the market, the MIPI Alliance will bring the benefits of open standards to more of the mobile marketplace. MIPI Standards will drive consistency in application processor interfaces, promoting reuse and compatibility in mobile devices while accelerating the delivery of these devices to users.

"With over 70 years of experience in the wireless communications industry, we see the MIPI Alliance as an important milestone in the evolution from custom to standards-based interfaces," said Duane Rabe, Vice President, Motorola Personal Communications Sector. "As a member of the MIPI Alliance, Motorola looks forward to helping drive initiatives for creating ever more compelling wireless products and services."

"The growth of the mobile phone industry will largely depend on its ability to broadly deploy leading-edge, interoperable, standard building blocks - something that has yet to happen," said Gadi Singer, Intel Vice President and General Manager of the Cellular Handheld Group. "With the addition of the new members, the MIPI Alliance is emerging as a key advocate for industry-wide openness, and Intel plans to take an active role to help lead the development of open, standard platform interfaces for mobile phones."

In addition to wireless pioneer Motorola and open-standards advocate Intel, the MIPI Alliance now boasts participation from virtually every mobile market segment, including major handset OEMs, peripheral device manufacturers, application processor vendors, memory suppliers, software developers and intellectual property vendors. New members include Agilent Technologies, ATI Technologies, Atsana, Austriamicrosystems, Cambridge Silicon Radio, Dice, Emblaze Semiconductor, Ericsson Mobile Platform, FASL LLC, Icera Semiconductor, Imagination Technologies, IMEC, Infineon Technologies, Marvell International, Mentor Graphics, M-Systems, National Semiconductor, NeoMagic, Nvidia, Omnivision, Philips Electronics, Renasas Technologies, Samsung Electronics, Seiko Epson, Sendo, SiemensAG, Sony Ericsson Mobile, Symbian, Synaptics, Toshiba, Transchip Israel Research, TTPCom, and Vimicro. These new members joined the founding members ARM, Nokia, ST Microelectronics, and Texas Instruments.

All MIPI members may participate in a launch meeting March 23-25 in Sophia Antipolis, France, which will include orientation sessions, board meetings, and initial working group meetings. More details about the meeting will be announced soon. MIPI working group members will begin collaborating immediately to develop new interface specifications for application processors and peripherals in mobile terminals, including camera, display, baseband modem and others.

Joining the MIPI Alliance
The MIPI Alliance is actively recruiting members to participate in the building of next generation standards. The MIPI Alliance is structured to provide multiple levels of membership, in which benefits are proportional to contributions. Basic levels of membership enable use of specifications, while other levels of membership enable participation in working groups to define specifications. More information including membership details on the MIPI Alliance is on http://www.mipi.org.

About The MIPI Alliance
The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance is a collaboration of mobile industry leaders with the objective to define and promote open standards for interfaces to mobile application processors. Through these open standards, the MIPI Alliance intends to speed deployment of new services to mobile users by establishing specifications for standard hardware and software interfaces to mobile application processors and encouraging the adoption of those standards throughout the industry value chain. The MIPI Alliance is intended to complement existing standards bodies with a focus on microprocessors, peripherals and software interfaces.

Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom.