ZyDAS ramps up production of WLAN chipsets

Taipei, April 2, 2003 (CENS)--ZyDAS Technology Corp. recently began volume production of its first wireless local area network (WLAN) chipsets and has started receiving trial orders from 14 manufacturers.

ZyDAS was reorganized into an independent company from a chip design within , Taiwanese networking-solution supplier Zyxel Communications Corp. in 2000. Capitalized at NT$250 million (US$7 million at US$1:NT$35), the company is one of the pioneers of Taiwan's WLAN chipset industry.

The new WLAN chipset combines base-band and MAC chips.

ZyDAS is expected to benefit from the Centrino solution introduced by Intel last month. The Centrino combines a Pentium M processor and a radio chip for mobile connectivity and is designed for use in notebook PCs.

Taiwanese suppliers like ZyDAS are expected to win big orders for electronic devices related to the Centrino.

ZyDAS executives said that their company has tried to shorten product delivery time by teaming up with frequency-chip suppliers. Although ZyDAS has many rivals in Taiwan, it is the only supplier to develop chips on ARM platforms, helping it beat other competitors to market chips with USB2.0 functions.

WLAN chips are made up of base-band chips, MAC chips, frequency chips and PA chips. Local base-band chip suppliers include Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd., ZyDAS, Admtek Inc., Airoha Technology Corp., VIA Technologies Inc. and Syncomm Technology Corp.

Taiwanese industry watchers have noted that ZyDAS hopes to market 802.11b radio chips in cooperation with local frequency-chip suppliers. Philips of the Netherlands is now a major partner of ZyDAS. ZyDAS executives estimated sales of radio chips to rise 50% worldwide this year over last year.

The Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK) of the government-backed Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) predicts that shipments of WLAN equipment will continue growing worldwide over the next five years and Taiwan will remain the world's largest supplier in the sector.

Although Intel has been accused of trying to dominate the world radio-chip market with its Centrino solution, ZyDAS said that it believes that the chip giant will still focus on microprocessors and chipsets since a large number of Centrino platform retailers still use non-Intel radio chips on the platform. Some specialists have noted that the radio chip used by Intel on the Centrino is inferior to other brands of radio chips available on the market now.

ZyDAS executives forecast around 90% of notebook computers worldwide will have WLAN functions in 2005, soaring from last year's 15%, thanks to Intel's energetic promotion of WLAN technology. Intel has shelled US$150 million to promote WLAN products.

ZyDAS broke even last month and expects increase revenue by 150% this year thanks to its IEEE 802.11b radio chips and IEEE 802.11g radio chips. The company currently depends on contract-chip manufacturer United Microelectronics Corp. to make most of its chips.