One of the world’s leading consumer electronics chip designers, Taiwan headquartered Sunplus Group, is targeting European growth – notably in mobile phones markets – from a new Cambridge research base.
It has set up at the Vision Park in Cambridge and has already built to 20 staff – with more to come.
A group spokesman revealed to Business Weekly that Sunplus was still recruiting engineers and would be in the jobs marketplace for some time to come.
Sunplus noted the strength of the Cambridge cluster two years ago when it worked with TTPCom – now Motorola – on a project involving 3G cellular communications processors.
Now the fabless chip specialist is working on new-generation processors for mobile phones and is confident that having moved into the Cambridge backyard of another world-leading superchip designer – ARM – it can benefit from the strong engineering pool in Cambridge.
Sunplus spokesman Wayne Shen told me: “Long term we see significant growth from Cambridge. We are working on an exciting mobile proposition and needed some Cambridge-style expertise to help take it forward.â€
Cambridge was hand-picked as the prime hub in the UK. It also has the honour of leading Sunplus Group’s European expansion strategy. The company intends to open an R&D centre in France this year.
Founded in 1990, Sunplus split into focused business divisions in 2006. Its Sunplus mMobile division specialises in chips for mobiles, DSC/PMP, game platforms and MP3 platforms. The company is understood to be working on future generation models for a broad range of personal entertainment and communication ICs.
Cambridge is able to play a strong hand in future content for mobiles and a number of specialists in China, Taiwan and Japan are eyeing the cluster for collaborations.
　
　
Written by Tony Quested, BUSINESS WEEKLY, UK.
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