Texas Instruments announced a single-chip cell phone technology! A live phone call from India to Europe was made during a Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) conference in order to display its single-chip cell phone technology.

Tom Engibous, chairman of TI made the phone call, demonstrating the next step in TI's strategy to deliver a single-chip cell phone solution for ultra-low-cost handsets in emerging markets, such as India.

TI's single-chip cell phone solution enables handset manufacturers to capitalize on the burgeoning opportunities in India and other emerging markets worldwide.

"The mobile phone is already indispensable in established markets, and wreless will become even more useful in countries where today the availability of wired communication is limited," said Engibous.

Our customers can use this technology to make ultra-low-cost handsets affordable. TI's single-chip cell phone solution integrates the bulk of handset electronics onto a single chip to dramatically reduce cost, power requirements, board area, and silicon area performance factors that are crucial for high-volume entry-level mobile phones.

Engibous announced the first cell phones built entirely in India, from concept to design to production. Based on TI's TCS chipset family, the GSM/GPRS handsets have been developed by Indian companies BPL and Quasar for Primus.

The handsets also include TI's BRF6150 single-chip Bluetooth module and other TI components, including audio amplifier, LED drivers, voltage regulators and standard logic/linear components. These designs will serve as platforms for development of ultra low-cost to mid-range voice- and feature- rich data-centric handsets.

The first phones based on the TI and BPL cooperation will be available in September 2005. Primus phones will be in production later in 2005.