Connect One Semiconductors, Inc., the leading manufacturer of Internet peripheral chips, today announced that its iChip(TM) Internet Controller(TM) has been selected by Falcom GmbH to Internet-enable its new Falcom 35, A2D-3 and A3 GSM (Global Systems for Mobile Communications) wireless modems.
The addition of iChip to Falcom's products embeds Internet protocols directly in the modems and enhances their functionality by enabling a modem to monitor and control an attached device, or to update its firmware, over the Internet via any GSM network today, and any GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) network in the future. The modems are targeted at telematics, telemetry and fleet management applications.
The killer application for wireless Internet connectivity is expected to be two-way mobile voice and data communications for vehicles, known as telematics. According to a study by Forrester Research, three out of four new cars sold will be equipped with sophisticated telematics systems by 2005. Forrester also forecasts that 30 million telematics units will be in cars for safety and security, 28 million units will be used for entertainment, such as satellite radio or passenger DVD viewing, and 25 million will be used for navigation. UBS Warburg predicts that telematics revenues will rise from $4 billion in 2000 to $24 billion in 2005, and reach $47 billion by 2010.
"We selected Connect One's iChip for two main reasons," said Ralf Leipoldt, managing director of Falcom GmbH. "First, it is more sophisticated and offers more functionality than any other hardware or software solution when adding Internet connectivity to our GSM modems. Second, Connect One's iChip gives us faster time-to-market, enabling us to be the first company to start shipping mass-produced, Internet-enabled GSM modems."
"Falcom selected Connect One's iChip for the same reasons as many of our other customers," said Alan Singer, Connect One's vice president of sales and marketing. "We are the only Internet connectivity vendor to offer an off-the-shelf solution that just drops into the customer's current design, saving valuable time-to-market and development costs. In this instance, Falcom can look forward to shipping its customers an Internet-enabled product just four months after evaluating our iChip. And they will be able to enhance iChip's functionality in the field by remote software downloads over the Internet whenever we add new features," he continued.
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