TI opens South Korea tech center for mobile TV

Texas Instruments Inc., the world’s largest maker of mobile phone chips, opened a wireless technology center in South Korea on Tuesday aimed at developing wireless multimedia technologies that can deliver television and other content to handsets.

Texas Instruments, the world’s largest maker of mobile phone chips, opened a wireless technology center in South Korea on Tuesday aimed at developing wireless multimedia technologies that can deliver television and other content to handsets.

The company made the investment along with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The center will focus on technologies such as Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting and Digital Video Broadcasting – Handhelds, an international digital TV standard for Europe and East Asia equivalent to the North America’s Advanced Television Systems Committee standard.

Mobile phone operators, as well as makers of handsets and handset components, have been pushing hard to enable mobile TV services, seeing a potential way to boost in revenue. Studies have presented a mixed picture of whether the public will want to pay for such services, however.

The center will also work on Wireless Broadband (WiBro) technology developed by Korea. Similar to WiMAX, WiBro base stations send signals that out allow users within a 1 to 5 kilometer area to connect to the Internet wirelessly. WiMAX does the over greater distances. The industry is working to ensure WiBro and WiMAX are compatible.