Corporate Profile
e.Digital Corporation, based in San Diego, California, licenses its line of patented hardware and software technologies for use in a wide variety of digital audio devices, and offers custom product design, manufacturing services, and other related services to its OEM customers. e.Digital's specialty is developing computer-compatible portable products utilizing its patented MicroOSTM. Applications for this technology include personal MP3 players, digital video products, voice recorders, dictation devices, automotive infotainment/telematics systems, and home audio components and accessories. The company provides custom product development solutions for major OEMs connecting portable devices to the Internet and local networks, and integrates new technologies and new storage media into products for its OEM customers.
In addition to its OEM business, e.Digital includes a Consumer Electronics Business Unit that launched a line of e.Digital-branded, portable digital audio products in November 2001. Its MXP 100 Classic, MXP 100 Sport, and TREÓ digital audio players are sold through the e.Digital online store at www.edigital-store.com and/or at consumer electronics retailers throughout the United States.
The company created the first portable product to include a user-independent speech recognition interface. Developed with technology from Lucent, e.Digital’s VoiceNavTM technology has an extensive English language dictionary and can recognize spoken words, names, and sounds not in the dictionary through the use of phonetics. VoiceNav technology has application in a variety of portable products and is also being designed into automotive infotainment/telematics systems.
The company’s technology, including its MicroOSTM and VoiceNavTM user-independent speech recognition interface, enables automotive OEMs and ODMs to incorporate additional features and successfully meet safety objectives in automotive telematics and infotainment solutions. Automotive telematics is the wireless exchange or delivery of communication, information, and other content between the auto and/or occupants and external sources. The Strategis Group, a research firm, predicts that 84 percent of new cars sold in 2004 will feature some form of telematics equipment, and Forrester Research estimates that telematics will become a $20 billion industry worldwide by 2006.
The company is an innovator in utilizing flash memory for digital voice, audio, image, video and data recording, storage, computer interface and playback. Commencing in 1993, its engineering group has led the conversion of audio signals from analog to digital, created a new class of digital-memory-based consumer products, and completed successful projects linking handheld audio recorders to the PC and the Internet.
Based on its experience implementing flash memory into portable applications, the company expanded its OEM designs and branded products to incorporate the latest storage media such as IBM’s Microdrive, SanDisk’s CompactFlash, Secure Digital Card, embedded miniature hard disk drives, and DataPlay digital storage media.
e.Digital is a member of the SD Association and an inaugural member of the IBM VoiceTIMES alliance which was established to develop standards for voice technologies in handheld mobile devices.
