Freescale's Ultra-Wideband Wins Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awar
PR, Thursday October 27
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 2005--Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL - News; NYSE:FSL.B - News) has received a Technology Innovation Award from the Wall Street Journal for its commercial Ultra-Wideband (UWB) products. Named a winner under the "wireless" category, Freescale was recognized for its efforts to enable the first consumer products using UWB.
In an audio interview published by The Wall Street Journal, News Editor John Leger, who oversees the awards, said, "For the purposes of this contest, an innovation has to represent a break with conventional ideas or methods. It has to go beyond marginal improvements on what's already on the market. In other words, it has to be truly novel."
Freescale was named the winner in the "wireless category," beating runners-up Airgo Networks and BT. Judges named winners in each of 12 categories and a total of 20 runners-up. Out of 750 entries, the field was narrowed to 104 semifinalists. Then a panel of expert judges from industry, research organizations and academia scored each entry and picked the winners. Judges praised Freescale for helping bring to consumers a technology that could lead to ubiquitous consumer deployment.
"This award validates the tremendous work that our team has done to enable a new approach to wireless communications," said Martin Rofheart, director of the Ultra-Wideband Operation at Freescale. "It is also timely in that many UWB-enabled applications, such as cell phones, USB hubs and high definition televisions (HDTV), will be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Indeed, UWB will play an important role as consumers become increasingly aware of technologies such as UWB that allow more wireless freedom."
About Freescale's UWB Solutions
Freescale's UWB solutions enable high rate transfer of video, audio and data streams wirelessly. At rates 100 times faster than Bluetooth® technology and with wire-like quality, UWB brings a new wireless option to consumer electronics and PC/peripheral manufacturers. Using UWB, for example, an MPEG2 movie or HDTV stream can be broadcast in real-time wirelessly. This allows consumers new freedom in the placement of home entertainment equipment, as the various components -- HDTV, digital video recorder, media server -- no longer need to be connected with wires.
Freescale, a pioneer in UWB and the first company to offer commercial UWB products, is currently shipping its UWB solutions to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers worldwide for a variety of consumer electronics and computing products. Freescale's XS110 chipset received Federal Communications Commission certification in 2004 and currently delivers 110 megabits per second and achieves a range of up to 20 meters. The world's first consumer product using UWB was announced in June, a high definition television from Haier Corporation, which uses Freescale's UWB solution.
About Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL - News; NYSE:FSL.B - News) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. Freescale became a publicly traded company in July 2004 after more than 50 years as part of Motorola, Inc. The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale, a member of the S&P 500®, is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies with 2004 sales of $5.7 billion (USD). www.freescale.com
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