MaxLinear Passes the 50 Million TV Tuner IC Shipment Milestone

Driven by World Wide Acceptance of Its Low-Power Digital CMOS RF Solutions Into Terrestrial, Cable and Mobile TV Markets

CARLSBAD, CA — MaxLinear Inc., a fabless semiconductor company at the forefront of developing all-CMOS broadband radio-frequency (RF) & mixed-signal IC solutions for consumer markets, today announced it has shipped more than 50 million TV tuner ICs. This milestone signifies the unique value of MaxLinear’s standard digital CMOS-based RF/mixed-signal IC technology as the replacement for traditional RF BiCMOS and Silicon Germanium based tuner IC solutions.

This achievement is largely attributed to MaxLinear’s market leading mobile TV position in early adopter mobile TV markets, and success in the digital terrestrial TV markets including set top boxes, television sets, PC TV and automotive applications.

“This milestone is a great recognition of the performance and value of our devices and the close relationships we’ve built with our customers,” said Kishore Seendripu, MaxLinear CEO. “Japan has been a pioneering market for mobile TV. The widespread use of mobile TV technology in Japan and Korea during live events, such as the World Baseball Classic, has demonstrated the mass-market appetite for mobile TV. This should prove enticing for mobile operators hunting for new revenue opportunities.”

“Additionally, we have been able to expand the success we’ve had with low power, mobile tuner technology to other markets, such as digital TV and set top box markets which are now recognizing the benefits of our TV tuner ICs in terms of performance, power and size,” he said.

“This milestone reflects the growing market migration to silicon based tuner solutions,” said Myra Moore, president at Digital Tech Consulting. “As the market moves to digital broadcasting both mobile and fixed consumer devices continue to shrink in form factor while increasing demand for number of tuners per appliance. This drives the need for the lowest power and smallest size tuner solutions available.”

The market for TV tuners is expected to exceed 500 million units by 2010 with many segments depending on silicon solutions to meet their next generation requirements of simultaneous multiple channel reception for video and data, extremely low power, and small form factor.

All of MaxLinear’s products are based on a standard digital CMOS architecture. MaxLinear’s design expertise has been able to adapt CMOS to the high-performance demands of the TV tuner market, while leveraging the technology’s small size, low power and low cost advantages.

The MxL70xx family of tuners is highly integrated, low power, extremely small tuner ICs for ISDB-T mobile television applications. MxL703RM, the latest offering for mobile TV for ISDBT-1 segment markets, measures only 1.57mm x 1.57mm, consumes only 40mW of power, these standard digital CMOS ICs are the smallest and lowest power solutions for ISDB-T mobile TV applications. MxL70xx series tuners are available for use in cellular phones, PDAs, portable media players, portable DVD players and automobile television systems.

The MxL500x is MaxLinear’s third-generation true digital CMOS silicon tuner for multi-standard digital terrestrial applications. Consuming only 300mW, it is packaged in a tiny 5mm x 5mm QFN32 package and supports standards including ATSC, ATSC-M/H, DVB-T and DTMB/CMMB for China. The tuner is aimed at set-top box, TV, PND and PCTV markets Additional versions are available covering automotive applications.