SK Teletech licenses TTPCom's GPRS software and Ajar Platform

- TTPCom Ltd, the world’s leading independent supplier of digital wireless technology, and SK Teletech, one of Korea’s fastest growing mobile phone enterprises¹, today announce the development of a range of GPRS handsets based on TTPCom’s GPRS/GSM protocol software and Ajar Platform. The SK Teletech products will include sophisticated multimedia devices with colour screens and digital cameras and will use chipsets supplied by Analog Devices. The first handsets are due for mass production in early 2005 and will be launched initially in China, the world’s largest mobile phone market.

SK Teletech entered the mobile phone market in 1998, supplying CDMA phones for the Korean market and exporting to Israel, China, Taiwan and Kazakhstan. The company has grown rapidly through a focus on technological excellence and innovative mobile phone designs; SK Teletech launched the first slider phone in Korea and was first to launch a mobile phone applying the CDMA 2000 1x service.

“We have a vision to become a top 10 world handset producer by 2007 and to enable us to add a range of GPRS/GSM handsets to our existing handset portfolio we have licensed TTPCom’s software. TTPCom have a very strong reputation in this market and one of their key advantages is the flexibility of their technology – we are able to mix and match software and applications in order to create differentiated products that will capture our customers’ imagination and maintain our reputation for innovative, fully-featured phones across our new GPRS range,” stated Ahn, Seung Jin, Senior Manager at SK Teletech. “TTPCom have an excellent understanding of both software and hardware design issues, as well as field trials and operator acceptance procedures and as we look to next generation products they have a very clear roadmap through EDGE and 3G. We are looking forward to a long and successful partnership.”

“SK Teletech are determined to grow their GPRS handset business quickly and have set aggressive timescales that see them progressing from licensing our technology to product launch within 9 months. Our design services option - in which we will be advising them on areas such as hardware design, field trials and production tests, whilst also providing a dedicated software customisation and integration team to work alongside their engineers - is just one of the many new products and services that we have developed to enable our customers to reduce their time to profit,” stated Nigel Walcot, Head of TTPCom’s Custom Solutions Group. “TTPCom’s Ajar platform is also designed to increase the productivity of handset teams; by providing them with pre-integrated applications that can be upgraded easily to suit GPRS, EDGE and 3G protocols, we remove the time consuming and labour intensive integration phases. This is a significant benefit to customers who need to react quickly to ever reducing product life cycles.”

A Complete Software Solution – from protocols to applications

TTPCom’s 3G/EDGE/GPRS/GSM protocol stacks are fully integrated with the company's Ajar Platform. The Ajar Platform delivers a pre-integrated set of applications and services plus a sophisticated toolset for fast customisation of the user interface. The Ajar Platform increases the productivity and flexibility of handset development teams enabling manufacturers to develop differentiated handsets with open OS style functionality, rapidly and economically. The Ajar Platform is delivered as an assured system solution, with two releases per year; key applications and services in the 2004/5 release include PoC, WAP2.0 browser, MMS, 2D/3D gaming, media player, MPEG4, MP3 and a range of Java (JSR) applications.