Nazomi and XCE supply industry's highest performing Java Platform to SK Telecom's Wireless handsets

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Dec 8, 2003

Nazomi Communications, Inc. and XCE Co., Ltd. recently announced that Nazomi's JA108 Multimedia Application Processor was selected to accelerate the performance of SKT's SKVM based GIGA Platform. After extensive evaluation XCE and SKT have determined that Nazomi's JA108 is the best solution to accelerate SKVM and the media-rich Java applications offered by SKT, and proves to be the most affordable and energy efficient solution on the market.

Ju-Hyeok Kim, President of XCE, commented, "With the help of the JA108 chip and XCE's optimized SKVM, we have broken all the performance records of Java handset platforms. For SK Telecom's GIGA platform, our combined solution has achieved Java VM acceleration by 100x, Java 2D graphics acceleration by 30x and over 6x acceleration for 3D graphics. With the availability of JA108 Java hardware, the Java content developers can now find new freedom in developing sophisticated multimedia applications."

"XCE's SKVM is a very high performance and proven Java Virtual Machine. We are glad that our JA108 chip has taken the SKVM's performance to a new level," said Mukesh Patel, president and CEO of Nazomi. "SKT is a global leader in providing information and telecommunication services to over 15 million customers. We are very happy that our technology combined with XCE contributes significantly to making the multimedia experience richer, faster and more energy efficient for SKT's customers."

The GIGA Project is a next-generation mobile phone project promoted by SK Telecom. Multimedia is a buzzword in the mobile Internet market. Reflecting this trend, carriers and device manufacturers are devising releases of multi-functional high-end phones with features such as a camera, color screen and multi-poly sound. The GIGA project is aimed to build an environment from which users can download and play the mobile rich media such as mobile 3D or mobile flash in high-end devices with acceleration chip (ex. Nazomi JA108, etc). SK Telecom, handset manufacturers, chip manufacturers, solution providers and content providers participate in the GIGA project for promoting a mobile Internet market. GIGA phones enhance the performance of applications and dramatically increase the performance (show 5-6 times graphic processing performance than general phone) of multimedia (2D/3D Graphics, Video, Audio, Animation and JPEG image) while reducing power consumption.

XCE (head office: Seoul, Korea; president: Ju-Hyeok Kim) started as an in-house venture company in SK Telecom in March 2000. XCE has attracted US $1.3 million (13%) from Hikari Tsushin Capital, a Japanese venture capital, and US $0.83 million (8%) from Korea Development Bank in 2001. In addition, SKT, the largest domestic mobile carrier (MS 53%), holds about 4% of XCE shares.

XCE provides a Java-based wireless Internet platform, branded as "SK-VM," for mobile devices such as handsets and PDA's. XCE has developed this powerful virtual machine using domestic technologies in accordance with the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) specification, and SK Telecom has adopted XCE's SK-VM as the international standard. SK-VM has earned its reputation in the international mobile market. XCE made a contract with Israeli 2nd largest mobile carrier, Pelephone, in April and also with APBW, a mobile telecom service provider in Taiwan in December 2002. SK-VM ported handsets exceeded 10 Million units as of the end of April domestically and 2 million units overseas. XCE's 2003 plan is having SK-VM installed in 20 million terminals in the world.