Samsung Leads Korea's Charge into Cell Phone Chips

Electronic News, April 19, 1999

Korea now produces 90 percent of cell phone components

San Jose, Calif. - In a move that signals Korea's intention to continue moving up the value added electronics food chain, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. said it has developed cell phone chipsets to supply local cellular hardware manufacturers.

Samsung said it has completed development of a Mobile Station Modem or MSM , Base Band Analog Processor or BBA and general-use operating system software for cellular handsets. The MSM and BBA are highly-integrated devices that control the function of cellular handsets.

Samsung said it has also completed development of its own frequency synthesizers and high-frequency (RFIC) chipsets, completing the localization of at least 90 percent of the parts and components used in wireless handsets. Korean-produced cell phone chips will save Korean OEMs about $2 billion in import costs by 2003, Samsung said.

With the development of the critical mobile handset chips and the company's advanced memory technology, Samsung Electronics plans to ship by the second half of 1999, a System-On-Chip with a MSM chip that includes FLASH/SRAM memories and speech codec and MSM and BBA chips, next generation IMT-2000 chips, that makes possible 153.6Kbps data transmission and are also compatible with the IS-95C standard.

Until the announcement of the first Korean source of the cell phone chipsets, these critical components have mostly been imported from Qualcomm in the United States and other non-Korea sources, Samsung said. Imports of cell phone chips have been increased to about $1 billion with the expansion of the CDMA market, Samsung said.

Samsung said it has invested around two years and some twenty-seven billion Korean Wan to develop the new chips and has filed for 25 domestic and foreign patents related to the hardware and methods for activating the "acoustic echo canceler" function for improving voice quality when using a hands-free kit.

The new SCom3000 chip is used in conjunction with the real-time pSOS general-use operating system software to facilitate the addition of multimedia functions such as web browser and e-mail to a new generation of cell phones. A specific signal-processing algorithm has been built in to improve call quality by eliminating acoustic noise. In addition, an 8K Enhanced Variable Rate Codec (EVRC) that is usable with CDMA handsets is also provided to offer clear communications.

The BBA chip transfers data between the wireless RF components and the MSM. To date, only Sony and Qualcomm have been offering such devices. The BBA chip operates on just 200 milliamperes, helping to increase call time and standby time and is available in four different package types to accommodate manufacturer's drive to build smaller and lighter handsets.