Frontier Silicon closes multi-million pound investment round from Nokia Venture Partners

London, 24th May 2004 - Frontier Silicon – the leading fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for digital TV/radio and consumer multimedia products – has announced it has closed an investment of several million pounds from Nokia Venture Partners. The new funding will allow Frontier Silicon to further develop its market-leading products for DAB digital radio and digital television and strengthen its development team.

Anthony Sethill, CEO of Frontier Silicon, said, “This is an important step for us, and we are extremely pleased to have Nokia Venture Partners as an investor. This investment will re-enforce our position in the market – we were first to develop and deliver complete turnkey systems for digital radio and TV comprising chips, software, intellectual property (IP) and modules, and now we are developing next generation products and systems to maintain our market lead.”

Antti Kokkinen, general partner at Nokia Venture Partners added, “We are excited by the growing market for digital multimedia technology, and impressed by the market dominance that Frontier Silicon has already achieved, becoming a significant part of the DAB digital radio revolution in Europe and Asia; with more and more countries adopting new digital broadcasting technologies, we also see excellent prospects for the company in other digital multimedia segments beyond DAB.”

Frontier Silicon was established in 2001, and is privately funded. Key shareholders include Apax Partners and Alta Berkeley, as well as Digital One, operator of one of the world’s largest DAB digital radio networks in the world, and Imagination Technologies, a leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property for the multimedia and communications market.

The company’s products include

• Chorus, a super-integrated low power system-on-chip for applications like digital radio, MP3, CD playback functions, FM and RDS;
• Venice, a range of cost-effective DAB digital radio modules for standalone receivers and for integration into CD-based audio products;
• Diablo, very low power DAB digital radio and internet audio modules specially designed for battery-powered audio products;
• Roadster, a dual band DAB receiver specially designed for integration into automotive and telematics applications;
• Logie, the world’s first single-chip solution for digital terrestrial TV, enabling low cost set-top boxes, digital television, and multimedia products combining digital TV, DVD and DAB all in a single box.

About Frontier Silicon
Frontier Silicon, winner of the PricewaterhouseCoopers hottest technology company of 2004 award, is at the forefront of the digital revolution with a range of semiconductor solutions for digital TV, digital radio and other emerging consumer multimedia products. As a fabless semiconductor business, Frontier Silicon’s core products include complete DAB modules, DVB-T solutions and the underlying system-on-chip (SoC) devices. Key customers for these products include consumer electronic, automotive entertainment and PDA/mobile phone manufacturers. In digital radio (DAB), the company’s chips are found in the world’s leading brands including Bush, Cambridge Audio, Goodmans, Grundig, Ministry of Sound, Philips, PURE Digital, Roberts Radio, Sharp and TEAC. For more information visit www.frontier-silicon.com.

About Nokia Venture Partners
Nokia Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. Backed by a number of value add limited partners, the fund leads investments in early stage mobile technology companies around the world. Launched in 1998, Nokia Venture Partners has a strong track record of leveraging its combined resources, experience and contacts to help build successful mobile businesses. The firm also has offices in Washington DC, London, Helsinki, Hertzelia, Seoul, Hong Kong and Tokyo. For more information, visit http://www.nokiaventurepartners.com.