Nokia Venture Partners invests in Frontier

LONDON -- Frontier Silicon Ltd., the Hertfordshire-based fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for digital TV, digital radio and consumer multimedia products, has closed an investment of several million pounds from Nokia Venture Partners.

Frontier did not give an exact figure for the investment from Nokia Venture Partners.

Frontier Silicon was established in 2001, and is privately funded. Key shareholders include Apax Partners and Alta Berkeley, as well as Digital One, operator of a commercial DAB digital radio network, and Imagination Technologies Group plc, supplier of semiconductor intellectual property for the multimedia and communications market.

The new funding is set to allow the company to further develop its products for DAB digital radio and digital television and strengthen its development team.

Antti Kokkinen, general partner at Nokia Venture Partners, said: "We are excited by the growing market for digital multimedia technology, and impressed by the market dominance that Frontier Silicon has already achieved, becoming a significant part of the DAB digital radio revolution in Europe and Asia; with more and more countries adopting new digital broadcasting technologies, we also see excellent prospects for the company in other digital multimedia segments beyond DAB."

Frontier Silicon's core products include complete DAB modules, DVB-T solutions and the underlying system-on-chip devices.

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