Motorola's closure of TTPCom, a couple of years after it paid £100m for it, will be an excellent thing for wireless start-up activity in the Cambridge area, according to Dr Tony Milbourn founder of TTPCom.
"It's good for Cambridge, there'll be ten start-ups as a result of TTPCom closing because they'll have redundancy money to fund start-ups", Milbourn told Electronics Weekly.
Milbourn has already joined his start-up, Camitri Technologies, and is currently looking for investors.
Asked what Camitri does, Milbourn replied: "Three key words: licensing, wireless, and technology." The technology involved is acquired from academia. Camitri has links with the UK universities: Bath, Bristol, Bradford, Birmingham, Cambridge and King's College, and with universities in Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China.
Asked whether licensing has got a bad name business these days, Milbourn replied: "My feeling is that licensing works if you are world-class. I ran a licensing business for 20 years at TTPCom and sold it to Motorola. TTPCom turned over £60m a year, that's not too bad. It's an interesting space between academia and industry. Academics do cool stuff in an interesting way, while industry requires solutions and making things work. Our job is to put that together."
"TTPCom was a very strong IP provider in the cellular market enabling Sharp and RIM to enter the marketplace", said Milbourn, "the key thing as an IP provider is to have a technology that the customer really needs and to deliver that in a way he can monetise."
"IP can be valuable if you have a pivotal position, if you're willing to be a company that changes the customer," added Milbourn, "for instance if you bring a new technology to a company like Samsung, that changes Samsung."
"The whole story about saying that the UK has great academic talent and we need to monetise that, so we get money in the UK, and Samsung gets a better product, is a strong story", said Milbourn, "we are talented developers of technology, and the Koreans are talented exploiters."
Milbourn joined Camitri last year. "Hillum (Professor Rick Hillum) got it started in 2005 building links with universities. We brash, commercial folk have got on-board to try and make the business a success", said Milbourn.
Camitri currently has six people. "We have income but we're pre-profit. We're two years from profitability", said Milbourn, "it takes two years to get to market and then volumes will fly. In 2012 we'll have 30 people, you can't do it overnight, you have to be pragmatic. We can build a £20m business in five years."
At the moment, Camitri is in the capital-raising phase. "We need external investment", said Milbourn, "we're out raising money at the moment."
What's the response of the money men? "Mixed, to be frank", replied Milbourn, "investors like the space between academia and industry and they like a low-risk investment and they like unlimited upside. We have all of those."
The big opportunity he now sees is the 4G roll-out in China. "The 4G timeframe in China is very aggressive", said Milbourn, "2010 to 2012 will see the roll-out of 4G systems."
For 4G, he sees LTE as being the dominant standard. "We're LTE proponents", he said, "though Wimax is close technically. You need to be able to serve both standards, so reconfigurable designs is what we're selling at the moment."
"A product I find exciting is mixing digital mobile TV and cellular - the linkage of broadcast TV and cellular", added Milbourn.
Surely no one wants to watch TV on a handset? "If you look at the experience in Korea, people want snacking", responded Milbourn, "they don't want to watch a soap opera but they can snack. Our technology allows you to interact with an ad on TV and, for instance, book yourself a test drive on an Audi at the nearest dealer which happens to be so-and so. We're selling that technology which allows assimilation of the two technologies."
Other areas where he's directing Camitri's focus are, he said: "Ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, self-configuring, power scavenging networks are a very interesting area. We are assembling a programme in that area."
The benefit of de-regulated ad hoc networks is, said Milbourn, that they give: "Power to the people. Why does Vodafone control the network? There's a cultural direction and a technology direction to this, ad-hoc, non-power-hungry networks can distribute the power to use the Internet more widely. Like in publishing, it allows more blogs, less central control."
Scavenging power allows networks to be maintenance-free, and independent of battery power, and can be installed in remote or difficult-to-access locations, and then forgotten about from a maintenance point of view.
Camitri is looking at scavenged power sources such as temperature gradients, micro vibrations and light levels. "There are lots of low-power sources", said Milbourn, "the problem is finding a ubiquitous source. If you can you can make wireless sensor networks completely battery-free. We don't have the answer but see it as a major opportunity."
"There are green applications in wireless, but we're more involved in the engineering uses of it," said Milbourn, "if you halved the power consumption of every phone in the world would it make a difference? Maybe it would cut out a power station. It's not worth it."
See also: Q5 interview - Tony Milbourn, Camitri Technologies
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