Who is MIPS' mystery licensee?

Mark LaPedus, EE Times
(05/06/2010 11:12 AM EDT)

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- IP house MIPS Technologies Inc. recently revealed that it had landed a major cellular baseband/application processor licensee based in Asia.

MIPS, which is trying to enter the handset market, would not comment on the partnership.

One analyst believes the partner is Taiwan's MStar Semiconductor Inc. ''Based on discussions with our industry contacts, we believe MIPS’ competitive win is with MStar Semiconductor, one of Taiwan’s fastest growing fabless chip companies,'' said Gary Mobley, an analyst at Benchmark, in a new report.

''While MStar is not a tier-one cellular chip company, MStar has some modest share and could benefit from design wins within the Chinese white box market. MStar seems to be attacking the Chinese cellular phone market by undercutting Mediatek’s prices,'' he said.

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