The two companies are promising to provide a reference design for a digital photo frame using Samsung's new application processor called S3C6410.

But wait. Why a lowly digital photo frame?

Richard Yeh, marketing director for Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.'s System LSI Business, believes the digital picture frame is potentially "the centerpiece of the connected home."

He's not kidding.

Clearly, the frame in question is not the static device your mother got last Christmas, repeating a sequence of perhaps 38 digital photos over and over again. The operative words used to describe Yeh's new generation of digital photo frames are "connected" and "interactive."

The two companies are hoping to position the digital photo frame as an easy-to-use but intelligent unit, to which various software and services can add function and value. Chumby has already created a widget-based "Chumby Network," aimed at enabling a variety of small consumer devices with web services "in a bite-size chunk," according to Stephen Tomlin, Chumby's CEO.

Chumby launched last year its first Chumby device— an unusual clock radio—featuring a Wi-Fi connection and a 3.5-inch touch screen, which can play podcasts, Internet radio and some Web video like David Letterman's latest Top 10 list.

The digital photo frame is a new frontier where the industry can start cultivating "a new class of personal consumer devices that are neither PC nor mobile phone," explained Tomlin.

Undoubtedly, the digital photo frame market is a fast-growing consumer electronics segment. The market, only 2.8 million units in 2006, is said to have grown to 24 million units in 2008, according to TSR, a Japanese market research company.

A big concern about the digital photo frame, though, is its rapidly sinking average selling price.

Today's non-connected digital photo frames have reportedly dropped to below $70. Tomlin observed, "There isn't enough oxygen left [in a commodity digital photo frame] to keep the industry going."

Badly needed to stop digital photo frame commoditization are such features as online photo-sharing capabilities, the ability to see YouTube, to send messages and play games.