Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., best known for its Panasonic brand of consumer electronic and digital communications products, today announced it has developed a new multimedia processor-based platform. The platform, that is to be applied to a wide range of digital appliances including mobile phones and audiovisual equipment, facilitates software development of digital consumer electronics and improves productivity and software design.

The new platform can accelerate the speed products are introduced to the market by more than five times the current rate, develop higher sound and image quality, lower power consumption, fortify security, and enhance responsiveness.

"The current burst of software development for digital electronics for the 'ubiquitous network' era may lead to enormous cost increases. Panasonic offers the solution to this software challenge with this new platform," said Dr. Susumu Koike, Matsushita's Senior Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer.

"At the core of the platform is an advanced, highly scalable and configurable multimedia processor allowing the platform to adapt to a wide range of applications. Unlike conventional approaches to developing software for each segmented product category, this new flexible platform can be applied to a broad range of products, while realizing faster development time and higher performance. Panasonic made this revolutionary platform possible with our technological strengths accumulated through our wide-ranging products from plasma TVs, DVD recorders, digital cameras, mobile phones, to car navigations systems. Our new platform can improve efficiencies in developing all these products, making a further contribution to the electronics industry," Dr. Koike said.

The company expects the platform will expedite realization of the "ubiquitous network society" where users can enjoy network connectivity among various portable and home-use digital appliances.

Beginning with the fiscal year starting April 2005, the company plans to apply the new technology to future models of next-generation digital consumer electronics.