To strengthen its technology development in wireless communications, VIA announced its plan to purchase the CDMA division from LSI Logic at a price of less than NT$1 billion in May. VIA CEO and president Chen Wen-chi said that he considered the acquisition project a good deal, especially seeing the great potential of the CDMA market. At present, with the exception of Europe, which adopts the GSM and GPRS systems, countries like the US, China, Japan, South Korea and India have all opted for the CDMA standard.
As the deal includes LSI Logic's product inventories and orders, VIA Telecom accordingly is taking over the company's previous clients as well. Chen said that currently two of VIA Telecom's customers have finished product designs, introducing a home entertainment server and a watch-like mobile phone. The two new products are also equipped with VIA's processors and chipsets, added Chen, which shows the synergy of VIA's diversification strategy. He said that effects of VIA's new business strategy, the “Canaan Project,” will be more pronounced in 2003 with several of its operations coming into practice.
At present, VIA Telecom is concentrating on CDMA baseband chips co-developed with ARM and Qualcomm.
Source: DigiTimes