Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (TSE: 6703) and SRS Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ: SRSL) announced that Oki has unveiled its ML2601, the world’s smallest 3D surround single-chip Large Scale Integration (LSI) for mobile phones, developed together with SRS Labs.  This 3D surround LSI offers high-quality sound and low power consumption, while including two speaker amplifiers that originally were not included in the original mobile phone platform.  Sample shipments for this chip starts today, with volume shipment planned for February 2006.
 
“Based on our strong track record in the mobile phone market, we succeeded in developing a single-chip with 3D surround and speaker amplifier functions.  Working together with SRS Labs, a company that is known for their high-quality 3D surround technology and experience in the portable audio market, we can now offer a simple, small, low-cost and low-power consumption chip, which makes it the best choice for mobile phones,” said Akira Kamo, president of Silicon Solutions Company at Oki Electric.
 
The 3D surround chip includes two of SRS Labs’ technologies; SRS 3D? (Extreme mode), a technology that delivers an incredibly wide 3D sound image to products with closely located speakers, and SRS Headphone?, a technology that enhances stereo over headphone playback.  The hardwired logic circuitry reduces power consumption by 80 percent compared with previous generation chips, thereby resulting in longer audio playback. The chip includes a two-channel amplifier, rated at 650mW at 3.6V for stereo - mobile phones. By adopting W-CSP packaging technology, Oki also enabled a super-small package size of 3.2mm X 2.5mm.
 
“SRS Labs is very pleased to be selected by Oki as a core component in their recent LSI advances of cell phone audio performance,” said Michael Franzi, vice president of marketing & sales - Licensing at SRS Labs.  “By implementing our patented 3D surround technology in this extremely small, cost-effective, and high-performance package, Oki is introducing a new level of audio enhancement to the worldwide mobile phone market.”