For Immediate Release
For
Further Information Contact:
|
Marvell
Media Relations Diane Vanasse Tel: (408) 332-3137 |
Marvell Media Relations Tate Tran Tel: (408) 222-7522 |
Marvell and E Ink Join Forces to Deliver a Radical New Generation
of Faster, Lower Power Ultra Thin eReaders for Mass Markets
Consumer Breakthrough: Marvell Gets to Market First with a
Total Solution for Innovative New eReaders at a Variety of Anticipated Price
Points
Santa Clara, California (November 3,
2009) — Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), a world leader in
storage, communications, and consumer silicon solutions, today announced its collaboration
with E Ink, the supplier of electronic paper
display (EPD) technologies for most of the world’s eReaders. The two companies have begun to ship a
highly integrated eReader processor available in complete turnkey platforms
aimed at the fast-growing eReader market. These new platforms are expected to accelerate
the rapid release of new forms of eReaders at a variety of price points.
“With this announcement, Marvell raises
the technology bar and takes the lead in the eReader market,” said Ms. Weili
Dai, Marvell's Co-founder and Vice President and General Manager of the
Company's Consumer and Computing Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc.
“Because this is a total platform solution – including Marvell key
technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G modem, and power management –
the ARMADA eReader has the potential to deliver the first mass market product
accessible and affordable to billions of consumers around the world. Marvell’s
passion is to give consumers more choice, improved features, and greater access
to more information with eReaders that are aimed at education, health, and
business applications.”
As one of the fastest growing consumer markets,
eReaders continue to grow in popularity due to falling retail prices, improved
features, and fast growing library of digital content. According to a recent
iSuppli Research report, eReaders are projected to top 18 million units shipped
in 2012, from 1.1 million units last year.[1]
“Our collaboration with Marvell will
deliver an integrated System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution to the market,” said
Sriram Peruvemba, Vice President of Marketing at E Ink. “This SoC solution is
aimed at offering highly desired features at competitive price points.”
Marvell and E Ink have been working
together and co-developing products for the ePaper market. The recently signed
agreement between E Ink and Marvell includes joint development and cross
licensing of next generation ePaper timing controllers and system platforms, which
the companies anticipate will result in higher integration and lower cost
solutions for eReader manufacturers.
Central to this new eReader platform is
the world’s first commercially available SoC that integrates a high performance
processor and state of the art EPD controller on a single chip — the Marvell
ARMADA® 166E application processor. The ARMADA™ 166E is designed to offer users
ultra fast renderings of high resolution PDF documents and support for the
latest ePaper technologies in new smaller, slimmer form factors with lower
system cost than the competition. The ARMADA 166E also brings to eReaders new
features that save power and extend battery life including a unique hibernation
mode, or zero power mode.
The two companies have also joined
forces with FirstPaper, LLC, to integrate unique technology into the ARMADA 166E.
This joint innovation enables a range of display sizes and resolutions,
including support for larger screens that will deliver layouts, graphics, and
content choices that people normally associate with periodicals, larger-format
books, and documents.
“Periodicals are the next big frontier
in eReading,” said Gil Fuchsberg, President of FirstPaper, which will bring a
new eReading ecosystem to market in 2010. “To enable great newspaper and
magazine reading experiences, eReading devices need the right tools to make
richer layouts and complex content come to life. We’re excited to be
working with Marvell to bring such tools to the market.” Device manufacturers will be able to
take full advantage of FirstPaper’s integrated content and commerce platform with
the ARMADA 166E.
Customer
Support
Customers have sampled and integrated the
Marvell ARMADA and E Ink based eReader platforms into their end solutions
— consumer ready eReaders are expected to be available to end-users in
2010.
“The enTourage eDGe™ is the industry’s first
dualbook, combining an E Ink reader with a netbook, notepad and audio/video
player and recorder into one central device,” said Asghar Mostafa, President
and CEO of enTourage Systems. “The ARMADA 166E gives the enTourage eDGe the power
it needs to meet people’s multiple, yet simultaneous digital needs, at an
attractive price point within reach of all consumers.”
“Marvell’s support was a key enabler in
Plastic Logic’s development of a high performance eReader to meet the needs of
business professionals,” said Frank Canova, VP Product Engineering for Plastic
Logic. “Plastic Logic plans to unveil the category’s first proReader on January
7 at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show.”
“During our
development of the Alex Reader — a dual screen eReader that incorporates
both E Ink for high contrast eReading, and color LCD screen for multimedia
playback and enhanced web browsing, Marvell was the clear choice,” noted Albert
Teng, Founder and CTO at Spring Design. “We needed a processor that could run
Android while delivering outstanding multimedia performance.”
About
ARMADA
The Marvell ARMADA family of
application processors is the first to offer customized silicon solutions for
market segments ranging from smartphones to consumer, embedded, and smartbook
devices combined with fully optimized support of industry standard operating
systems and software frameworks such as Google Android, Microsoft Windows
Embedded, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Adobe Flash, Ubuntu and Maemo while
offering OEMs a high level of software re-use in order to enable them to focus
on product differentiation at the application and user interface levels.
About
E Ink
E Ink Corporation is the world's
leading supplier of electronic paper display (EPD) technologies. E Ink's
technology is ideal for many consumer and industrial applications spanning
handheld devices, eBooks, eNewspapers, PC-accessories, public information
displays and promotional signs. E Ink is a private corporation that includes
among its investors and strategic partners Air Products and Chemicals, ChiLin Technology, Epson, Hearst Corp, Intel Capital, LG
Display, Motorola, Philips, Prime View International, Toppan Printing Co and
Wacom. E Ink's customers include Amazon, Casio, Citizen, Hanwang, Hitachi, iRex, Lexar, Plastic Logic, Samsung and Sony. Recently, E
Ink has signed an agreement to merge with Prime View International (8069: TWO)
with the intent to close the merger by December 2009. E Ink news can be found
at: www.eink.com.
About
Marvell
Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) is a world
leader in the development of storage, communications, and consumer silicon
solutions. Marvell’s diverse product portfolio includes switching, transceiver,
communications controller, wireless, and storage solutions that power the
entire communications infrastructure including enterprise, metro, home, and
storage networking. As used in this release, the terms “company” and “Marvell”
refer to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and its subsidiaries. For more information,
visit http://www.marvell.com.
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Marvell and the Marvell logo are registered trademarks of Marvell or
its affiliates. Armada is a trademark of Marvell or its affiliates. Other names
and brands may be claimed as the property of others