e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[LGJ]

Cassie ..wrong again.

A 'desi' chip maker preferred worldwide

By Anand Parthasarathy


http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2005010200651100.htm&date=2005/01/02/&a....

BANGALORE, JAN. 1. If you fly by Alaskan Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines or RyanAir today you will be able to enjoy one of the most advanced digital media players in the world, to hear music or view movies. Next week in Las Vegas (United States), at an international Consumer Electronics Show, at least half dozen manufacturers will unveil their own branded versions of the portable media player - which for the first time, will not only play audio and video but also will allow users to record and store up to 50 full length movies - that will cost around $ 300 a piece.

One of the world's more popular budget digital movie cameras or `handycams', made by the Taiwan-based Premier Image, can be bought in India for about Rs. 8,000 on the baazee.com auction site.

And by mid 2005, at least two manufacturers in Korea will be launching a new generation of see-as-you-speak video telephones that allow you to make cheap phone calls that ride on the Internet.

A common link


What is the common link between these different products?

The fact that all of them are fuelled by cutting-edge technology and digital chips conceived and designed by Ittiam Systems, an Information Technology company wholly owned and staffed by Indians, based in Bangalore, that turned three today.

Significantly, it has just won recognition by independent technology watchers as the ``world's most preferred supplier of digital signal processing intellectual property.' The details of how this rating was arrived at by the technology research agency, Forward Concepts, shared with The Hindu , show that Ittiam is way ahead of competitors, in the perception of digital electronics manufacturers, both for its hardware and its software.

Indeed, the proud `made in India' brand that Ittiam has carved out for itself, is in a new and emerging technology niche — a `sangam' or confluence of hardware and software, called embedded systems, where a small number of chips on a card — or even a single ``system on a chip', can fuel a number of different applications.

This is arguably, one of the most significant achievements by an Indian technology company in 2004.

Ittiam prides itself on the freedom its fairly small design and marketing team of about 100 enjoys to `think' ahead of the industry: Its name is an acronym for French mathematician Rene Descartes' famous statement: I Think, Therefore I Am.

CEO Srini Rajam and six others, moved from another big name in digital signal processing - Texas Instruments - to start Ittiam on January 1, 2001. Since then, they have taken on board key engineers like Manish Singhal who came from Motorola, and helped create the portable media player Sriram Sethuraman who left U.S. academia and Sarnoff Labs, to guide video imaging, Murali Muthukrishnan who came from Intel to design the video processor, Sukanya Chandramouli who gave up a career at Texas Instruments to create speech and video products, B. Bhaskaran who had a long career at C-DOT before he became a core member of the multimedia systems team.

This correspondent was enabled to meet all these people and a dozen others whose talents helped Ittiam gain global leadership so fast in so many product lines — the first time the company has brought together its entire intellectual strength for interaction with any member of the media.

Last month, the equity arm of the Bank of America invested $ 6.5 million in Ittiam — which is more than all the money that the company had attracted since it first started. ``It will allow us to fund more far reaching research.'

Mr. Rajam says, ``we are already thinking of products for 2007-8."

Sometime in 2005, their next breakthrough device, a digital set top box based on the Internet Protocol, will be brought to market by Chinese and Korean makers — and the Ittiam Business Development Director, Prem Anand, has a special interest in this: the company feels it has a huge potential in India, and may for the first time allow a co-branding operation with an Indian manufacturer that will tell lay Indian customers that the device has ``Ittiam Inside.'

They are already looking ahead at Ittiam this week — at the promise and scope of the next generation emerging standard known as 802.11n — way beyond today's WiFi based access to the Internet.

When the standard is actually promulgated, they hope to have an edge because, like their icon Descartes, they think, therefore they are — world-beaters.

************************************************************************************

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 20, 2003

High-Quality DivX(R) Video Technology and e.Digital's Hardware and
http://edig.com/newsDetail.php?id=41

Firmware Make First Run Movie Content Secure In the Skies

e.Digital Corporation (OTC:EDIG) today announced that APS' digEplayer(TM), designed, developed and powered by e.Digital technology, will use patent pending video and security technology supplied by DivXNetworks. e.Digital's technology includes proprietary hardware and firmware to secure the content available on the portable video-on-demand entertainment system.