Freescale designing chips for handheld devices, smart books

Freescale Semiconductor, with operations in the US, Europe and Asia, together with its Hyderabad-based partners is working on a portable device for carrying out banking transactions. This will come in handy while paying wages to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme workforce.

The company is also working on a low-cost smart book, a broadband access device that can open multimedia, music, video and other contents on the Internet.

Speaking to Business Standard, Freescale country sales manager Vivek Tyagi said the handheld transaction device will be ready by August this year.

Being developed by city-based product making company, LinKwell, the device would be useful for e-governance projects. One variant of the battery-operated handheld device will come with security embedded into the chip for banking transactions.

The smart book, being developed by city-based Elloca, another technology product company, will be a low cost laptop, Tyagi said. “The price will be attractive,” he said, adding it would have a touch screen version too and would be out in the markets in a few months.

Freescale makes chips at its Noida plant for automating power meter reading. The company has tied up with start-up firms for developing products across telecom and multimedia segments. It is providing the required tools and technologies for developing wireless lighting control systems and is also working on touchscreen and multimedia interactive devices.

In 2008, it had acquired city-based In-Toto, which has a research and development and a software development wing. The focus here will be on network security.

Tyagi said the semiconductor industry would grow at 25 per cent a year on the back of increased demand for UPS, inverters, telecom products, smart cards and the Unique ID card project.

The company registered revenues of $ 3.51 billion (about Rs 15,619 crore) in 2009.