Via Deccan Herald - Internet Edition

MindTree Consulting, an international IT and R&D services company, has helped NEC Corporation, Japan, to integrate Bluetooth wireless technology into its GSM phones.

NEC customers can now wirelessly transfer photos, music, video clips, address book contacts and schedules, as well as, use their phone as a wireless modem and printer, this was announced by the company at a press meet here on Wednesday.

NEC has already shipped 200,000 phones this quarter. MindTree receives royalty payments on every NEC mobile phone that ports MindTree’s Bluetooth IP, sold, yielding multiple scalable revenue streams for the company.

New chip

MindTree also unveiled a new 1.5mm analog integrated circuit with intelligent charging capabilities for Lithium-ion batteries, commonly used in hand-held mobile devices, for a leading Korean manufacturer of semiconductor devices for wireless products. Lithium-ion batteries are favoured for hand-held devices due to their light weight, high energy density and lower maintenance needs.

“It took 3 of us about 5 months to develop this analog IC which will be taped out for fabrication over the next few weeks and is expected to ship in product in early 2006’’ said MindTree Consulting Vice President (R&D Services) Padmanabhan S N.

MindTree will be the first IT services company in India to hit $100mn this year, in just 6 years time, said COO Subroto Bagchi. “We have invested $2.5mn in Bluetooth R&D over the last 5 years which is paying off now and we will be doubling our VLSI engineering team from the current 200 to 400 in the next few months’’ he added.

According to CTO (R&D Services) Vinod Deshmukh the company has launched its Ultrawideband (UWB) program, which is a short-range, high-data-rate solution for computers and consumer electronics.