Agilent establishes mobile research base in Korea
Agilent Technologies has increased its focus on the mobile handset market with the launch of the Agilent Asia Mobile Development Center in Seoul, Korea.
The center will initially employ 50 staff, including the engineering team from Seoul-based Wavics, a fabless designer of ICs for power amplifier (PA) applications that Agilent recently acquired (see related story).
Efforts at the center will focus on Agilent's mobile handset components, including PAs for CDMA and W-CDMA. As well as hosting research activity, the new center will provide marketing an applications support.
One of the center's aims is to create front-end modules that can integrate Agilent's PAs with its film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) duplexers.
According to Agilent this combination will allow phone manufacturers to significantly reduce circuit board space, enabling smaller and thinner, clamshell-style handsets.
"Korea is a mobile technology leader, and its universities are graduating large numbers of highly educated and skilled electrical engineers," said Young Sohn, president of Agilent's semiconductor products group.
"We selected Korea because it places us close to our mobile handset customers, where we can better serve them and help define tomorrow's innovative, feature-rich handsets."
