Freescale has confirmed that it is pulling out of the UWB Forum (ultra wideband) that it helped found, saying that it is now ready to focus its efforts on creating products now that standards are in place.
“We are about solutions, not specifications,” a Freescale spokeswoman said. “As such we really need to move onto initiative that supports that focus on delivering silicon solutions.”
Now that the UWB specification in the UWB Forum has been completed, Freescale plans to put its resources behind offering products, the company said.
"Freescale's UWB focus today is on delivering cable-free USB solutions for consumer applications,” said Martin Rofheart, director of UWB technology at Freescale, in a statement. “The UWB Forum's focus is on standards, regulatory and technology development. As a result of these diverging strategies, Freescale has withdrawn from the UWB Forum in order to exclusively focus on cable-free activities. We wish the forum well but Freescale is now focused on consumer applications for our cable-free USB.”
To that end, Rofheart added, Freescale will be formalising its cable free activity, first announced at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, and will continue to highlight customer and product design wins over the next quarter.
“We are well positioned to capture the wireless USB market with an early market lead and our unique ‘extension’ strategy for USB, a true extension of existing USB done wirelessly,” he said. “As Wi-Fi is to Ethernet, we believe cable-free USB is to USB, which will encourage rapid customer adoption and leverage the 1 billion existing USB devices in the market today."