Tuesday, June 9. 2009

And now…GPS in Everything- SiRF’s SiRFatlasIV Chipset is Designed for a Many Mobile Devices

The market for portable devices is changing rapidly and is now broken into three classes:

• Single function devices like MP3 Players
• Programmable devices like Smartphones, laptops, or Netbooks
• A new class of multifunction devices with some programmability. These might be devices that are programmed for one function but can accept other embedded functions much like a portable navigation device (PND) with entertainment features. WinCE and Android can start to enable these kinds of devices with more programmable capabilities.

And multifunction capabilities are very important for mobile devices in developing countries were users only want to carry one thing in their pocket that is a phone, navigation, and entertainment system.

All of this is according to Kanwar Chadha, founder and chief marketing officer of SiRF Technologies. SiRF started looking at the possibility of offering a multifunction, programmable chip three or four years ago. Last year, SiRF launched the premium SiRFprima location system processor that offered a 64-channel chip to support the U.S. GPS and European Galileo constellations, plus 3D visualization, high-resolution video recording, etc. as the company’s first attempt at a multifunction chip.

The new SiRFatlasIV location engine processor being launched today by SiRF Technologies is designed to location-enable just about any mobile device you can think of: Netbooks, digital cameras and other, entertainment portables like MP3 players that perhaps were before not a high priority to become location-aware devices.

The objective of the SiRFatlasIV is to give a much richer visualization experience coupled with navigation and all that comes with a GPS chipset including the ability to be more programmable for developers. It will have a lower price point to support a consumer market for mobile devices of many different genres.

But Chadha also said the new chip is targeted at supporting location-enabled appliances for the enterprise. This multifunctional chip set would be a likely solution to location-enable:
-    embedded mobile device like sales force management
-    telematics solutions
-    dedicated devices for mobile resource management
-    dedicated devices for asset management

Chadha says he wants to simply offer a location-enabling platform and let the market determine how to use it. Intel, he says, believes that location is an integral part of their future platforms. Some Netbooks have SiRFStarIII chips already. But in the future, expect laptops and many other mobile handsets to support location determination as well as this new class of multifunctional devices.