Configurable Phone Initiative has Faith

Wednesday, 02 February 2005 02:00

Configurable Phone Initiative has Faith

Sophia Antipolis, France, 2 February 2005 – Faith Technologies, a division of Faith Inc., a leading provider of online music to the mobile market, is the newest industry leader to sign up to Open-Plug’s Configurable Phone Initiative, a cross-industry venture to promote software flexibility in mobile phones.

Currently, Faith's mobile sound solution has reached a coverage level of 80% in the Japanese market including iModeTM, and KDDI(au). Tone generators, using Faith Group technologies, have already been licensed to various ODM and handset makers, not only in the Japanese PDC market, but also GSM, CDMA and 3G markets. Faith Technologies is a member of the MIDI Manufacturer’s Association (MMA) and Faith Inc. serves as the Chairperson of the Music Copyright Committee, Mobile group of the Association of Musical Electronics Industry (AMEI) and as the Assistant Group Leader of the AMEI MIDI Standard Committee, Mobile MIDI Working Group.

Denis Escleine, sales manager of Faith Technologies, said, “Faith is active in foundations such as these in order to popularize entertainment on mobile devices. We see the concept of the configurable phone, and the Configurable Phone Initiative, as key to ensuring that the industry meets customer’s expectations for the delivery of exciting content to 3G phones. Our membership of this Initiative is a strategic component in our plans to roll out our technology worldwide.”

Eric Baissus, CEO of Open Plug, added, “Faith is a leader in the provision of multimedia content and ring tone download solutions to the major carriers in Japan and US, but also other key carriers in the Asia-Pacific region, including China Mobile, China Unicom and Orange Hong-Kong. Their support underlines the importance of the configurable phone concept to the content provision community.”

Launched at 3GSM, the ‘Configurable Phone Initiative’ supports the development of mobile phones with modular software architectures that are easy to adapt with new applications and user interface features during the life of the design – even while the phone is in the field. Leading networks, phone makers, IC vendors and application developers supporting the initiative include Modelabs, Philips Semiconductors, France Telecom R&D, Sasken and Jaatayu.

Teams from Faith Technologies and Open-Plug have ported Faith’s high quality MIDI based audio engines onto ELIPS. Through this partnership customers can achieve time to market reduction by using the wide synthesizer solutions available on the quickly configurable framework from Open Plug.

Through the Configurable Phone Initiative, Faith Inc development teams have access to a complete development and deployment framework from Open Plug, including the ELIPS Studio tool chain, providing a complete software development environment to develop, integrate and download software applications on ELIPS enabled phones. They also have available to them complimentary Configurable phones, and access to the ELIPS Mobile Edition and Component data base, providing a complete application framework and pre integrated applications, including the latest MMI, messaging, gaming, email, browsers, and other applications from Open-Plug’s application software partners.

About Faith Technologies and Faith Inc.

Headquartered in Montpellier, France, Faith Technologies SAS is the European division of Faith Inc... Faith Technologies provides high quality audio solutions for wireless devices to a wide range of OEMs and ODMs worldwide. Headquartered in Kyoto, Faith Inc. is a Japanese company and a leading provider of online music. Faith expanded significantly from 1999 driven by the explosion in the Asian mobile services market. Faith’s sales grew continuously from €5 million in 1999 to €172 million expected in 2004.

About OpenPlug:

Open-Plug was founded in the summer of 2002 by a team of developers with a strong background in embedded mobile software development, and familiar with the quickly expanding challenges associated with it. The company’s aim is to provide to the mobile phone industry a tool framework, providing a unique Software design flow, which supports seamlessly and efficiently the value chain of embedded software development for Mobile terminals.

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www.open-plug.com

Faith Technologies

Le Thales - 1567 avenue Albert Einstein

34000 Montpellier, France

Tel : + 33 499 525 172