China's Quest for "MIPS in Wearable"

At stake is Ingenic's survival and future of MIPS

Junko Yoshida
4/10/2014 09:00 AM EDT

BEIJING — Let's be blunt: Not many serious players in the electronics industry today are sanguine about the survival chances for MIPS processors in a global mobile market where in the last decade -- almost single-handedly -- ARM has built its formidable ecosystem.

Against that backdrop, the industry can't help but ooze with pessimism as it regards Ingenic Semiconductor, a Beijing-based supplier of its own MIPS-based mobile SoCs.

Armed with a home-grown MIPS CPU core, the Chinese fabless company, founded in 2005, flew under the radar until 2010, when it first burst into the then emerging tablet scene and went public in China. Despite initial success in e-books and tablets, Ingenic ended up abandoning the tablet marketing in late 2012. Ingenic today is betting its life on the yet-to-be defined smartwatch market.

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