Motorola Invests in AMIMON

Looking to move bandwidth-demanding uncompressed content around the home, set-top box giant Motorola, Inc. on Tuesday announced it has invested in AMIMON Inc., a maker of semiconductor technology for the wireless transmission of high-definition (HD) video.

The unspecified equity investment was made by the vendor’s Motorola Ventures strategic investment unit. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

AMIMON's WHDI technology aligns with Motorola's connected home strategy, said Reese Schroeder, managing director of Motorola Ventures. "Our investment reflects our belief that AMIMON's solution is well positioned to offer a high quality wireless uncompressed HDTV link between video sources such as a digital set-top and a high-definition TV," he said.

Motorola’s IP video strategy has been fueled largely through a series of key acquisitions in the past year, including Netopia Inc. (home networking devices), Kreatel Communications (set-top boxes), Tut Systems Inc. (video encoding), Broadbus (VoD platforms) and RiverDelta (home cable equipment).

AMIMON's WHDI technology enables wireless transmission of uncompressed high-definition video streams in the 5GHz unlicensed band. WHDI enables applications such as wireless flat-panel TVs, wireless projectors, wireless high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) and wireless VGA repeaters.

ABI Research projects the core home networking hardware market will grow to $10 billion by 2011, while the total value of networked entertainment, data, storage and communications devices for consumers will grow to over $85 billion by 2011.

"Motorola and AMIMON share a common vision of facilitating connectivity between consumer electronics devices," said Dr. Yoav Nissan-Cohen, chairman and CEO of AMIMON. "The investment from Motorola will fund our plan to set WHDI as a new industry standard for connecting high-definition video sources to displays wirelessly."

AMIMON is a fabless semiconductor company pioneering wireless uncompressed HD video for universal connectivity among CE video devices. AMIMON's wireless HDMI allows flat-panel televisions and multimedia projectors to wirelessly interface to all HDTV video sources at a quality equivalent to that achieved with wired interfaces such as component video, DVI and HDMI.

AMIMON operates internationally out of offices in Herzlia, Israel, Santa Clara, Calif., and Tokyo. The company is funded by Cedar Fund, Walden Israel Venture Capital, Evergreen Partners, Stata Venture Partners, Argonaut Ventures and Motorola Ventures.

AMIMON Inc. www.amimon.com  

Motorola, Inc. www.motorola.com

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