News & Analysis
China fabless: Nufront ventures beyond tablet chips
Junko Yoshida
11/6/2012 7:00 AM EST
High hopes for HDMI stick
Nufront’s strategy doesn’t stop at the apps processor. The company is rolling out its first-generation GSM/WCDMA 3G baseband chip, TeLink 7619. Calling it a “dual-modem platform,” the new chip incorporates digital RF, power management and baseband, according to the company. How this will fare against other GSM/WCDMA baseband chips from competitors is unknown. But Nufront hopes to offer a “complete smartphone solution” in 2013, by adding its baseband chip to NS115.
Yang made it clear that Nufront, during the second quarter this year, acquired some essential IPRs on WCDMA. The Chinese company paid $9.0 million to InterDigital, a company with broad wireless patent portfolio. However, it remains unclear what exactly Nufront got. InterDigital only confirms the deal in vague terms: “We did enter into a set of agreements with Nufront, and those agreements included the transfer of a certain number of patents as well as other elements.” InterDigital’s spokesman added, “Our practice is not to offer any comment on the specifics of patent transfers with partners.”
Separately, in June, Intel cut a deal to buy about a host of wireless technology patents from InterDigital for $375 million.
Other new product areas Nufront is pursuing include an HDMI stick. The HDMI stick, running Android OS, is designed to bring online video to a regular TV. “At less than $50, you can turn your TV into a smart TV,” said Nufront’s Yang. While the HDMI stick is often pegged as a promising new market by many Chinese fabless companies, Jordan Selburn, senior principal analyst at IHS iSuppli, sees that such a market is “almost nonexistent” at the moment. “There are sufficient reasons to expect that the stick form-factor could become quite popular, however, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this became a major portion of the OTT (over-the-top) boxes [sold independent of the service provider],” he added.
The “Internet of Things” is also in Nufront’s sights. The company believes its 3G modules could be particularly useful in the vertical market for Internet of Things applications.
Nufront’s strategy doesn’t stop at the apps processor. The company is rolling out its first-generation GSM/WCDMA 3G baseband chip, TeLink 7619. Calling it a “dual-modem platform,” the new chip incorporates digital RF, power management and baseband, according to the company. How this will fare against other GSM/WCDMA baseband chips from competitors is unknown. But Nufront hopes to offer a “complete smartphone solution” in 2013, by adding its baseband chip to NS115.
Yang made it clear that Nufront, during the second quarter this year, acquired some essential IPRs on WCDMA. The Chinese company paid $9.0 million to InterDigital, a company with broad wireless patent portfolio. However, it remains unclear what exactly Nufront got. InterDigital only confirms the deal in vague terms: “We did enter into a set of agreements with Nufront, and those agreements included the transfer of a certain number of patents as well as other elements.” InterDigital’s spokesman added, “Our practice is not to offer any comment on the specifics of patent transfers with partners.”
Separately, in June, Intel cut a deal to buy about a host of wireless technology patents from InterDigital for $375 million.
Other new product areas Nufront is pursuing include an HDMI stick. The HDMI stick, running Android OS, is designed to bring online video to a regular TV. “At less than $50, you can turn your TV into a smart TV,” said Nufront’s Yang. While the HDMI stick is often pegged as a promising new market by many Chinese fabless companies, Jordan Selburn, senior principal analyst at IHS iSuppli, sees that such a market is “almost nonexistent” at the moment. “There are sufficient reasons to expect that the stick form-factor could become quite popular, however, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this became a major portion of the OTT (over-the-top) boxes [sold independent of the service provider],” he added.
The “Internet of Things” is also in Nufront’s sights. The company believes its 3G modules could be particularly useful in the vertical market for Internet of Things applications.
HDMI stick, running Android, is designed to turn an ordinary LCD TV into a smart/Internet streaming TV.
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joyhaa
11/6/2012 8:22 PM EST
Unlike Allwinner and Rockchip, who walks the talk, Nufront has been a marketing company and lives on burning Gov funding, fast, for years. In fact without Gov funding, it's dead years ago. I don't think this is a promising company by any standard.
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junko.yoshida
11/7/2012 2:36 PM EST
Nufront is certainly growing bigger than ever before. The issue is whether the company are generating enough revenue to sustain all the engineers they hired in recent years.
But I find the Nufront play in areas that go beyond apps processors interesting. Again, how it pans out will greatly affect the company's future.
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uPlay Tablet
11/8/2012 2:59 PM EST
It will be difficult for NuFront. As the gateway of Chinese made tablets and provider of custom built tablet for vertical market, we at uPlay Tablet (http://www.uPlayTablet.com/) haven't seen them on our radar detector - we are working with handful of tablet factories and representing a couple top Chinese tablet brands, like Ainol . All of these tablets are powered by RockChip, AllWinner, ViMicro, and recently dual-core CPUs from AMLogic, but none of them by NuFront. The HDMI stick idea is not new, we have a few factories making such a product.
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JohnSm
11/8/2012 9:33 PM EST
The baseband and IPR strategy is interesting, as non of the Chinese chip makers have those, and the big guys like NV, Intel are all going after baseband. I think Nufornt is worth keeping an eye on, as 3,4 years ago, nobody heard of RockChip, AllWinner, ViMicro in the area as well. Chinese tablet will have a big share in the tablet market.
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junko.yoshida
11/9/2012 10:34 AM EST
I agree. Things do change and move fast in China. You can't take anything for granted.
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uPlay Tablet
11/9/2012 3:17 PM EST
ViMicro was founded more than 10 years by a couple Berkeley and Stanford returnees, and they IPOed on Nasdaq in 2004 (I forgot exactly which year, but long time ago). RockChip is also a company founded long time ago by mainly government funding. They didn't come up from nowhere.
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help.fulguy
11/10/2012 2:21 PM EST
Nice Ad Junk.
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help.fulguy
11/10/2012 2:23 PM EST
Funny. Patent wall in a chinese company. Are those the patents they infringed upon? Funny!!!
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