Symbian announces Media Device Framework in Symbian OS version 8.0

New multimedia hardware abstraction layer provides optimized support for advanced multimedia acceleration and reduces time to market

3GSM World Congress, Cannes, France – 23 February 2004 – Symbian today announces that the Media Device Framework (MDF) is to be included in deliveries of Symbian OS version 8.0. The MDF is the result of collaboration between leading semiconductor manufacturers, Symbian licensees and other ISV partners.

The MDF is a multimedia Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for Symbian OS version 8.0 that provides support for video, audio and voice recognition acceleration technologies. Symbian OS is the global industry standard operating system for smartphones and is licensed by the world's leading handset manufacturers, which account for over 80 percent of annual worldwide sales.

MDF enables mobile phone handset manufacturers and Symbian's middleware partners to take advantage of optimized multimedia acceleration technologies independently of the underlying hardware platform. This provides a faster time to market when developing new devices as any investment made in existing software development can be easily transferred to new hardware.

Multimedia services are standardized for Symbian OS with the MDF, yet handset manufacturers and middleware developers can still capitalize on the benefits of the latest hardware acceleration technology. Semiconductor manufacturers and Symbian OS device creation partners benefit from opportunities to provide optimized Media Device components, including audio and video CODECs and other multimedia accelerated technologies.

Symbian
"Symbian is delighted to be offering the new Media Device Framework in Symbian OS version 8.0 to provide our customers and partners with opportunities for faster time to market and access to advanced multimedia services," said Bill Pinnell, Product Strategist, Multimedia and Games, Symbian.

"The definition of MDF by Symbian and its partners is the culmination of over two years of effort in agreeing a common interface that can be used by a wide range of ISVs and application developers to access the latest in advanced multimedia accelerated technologies.” 

ST
"ST has collaborated closely with Symbian on the definition of MDF to ensure that our Nomadik platform can deliver the ultimate in Multimedia performance to Symbian OS application developers,” said Guy Lauvergeon, General Manager, Multimedia Platform Unit at ST. “ST is committed to providing MDF-compliant audio and video CODECs and other multimedia-accelerated technologies to enable mobile phone handset manufacturers to reduce their time to market, while benefiting from Nomadik's architectural innovations.”

Texas Instruments
"Texas Instruments has been at the forefront of delivering advanced multimedia acceleration in mobile products and will support the MDF that will be leveraged by a wide range of highly successful OMAP™ application developers on TI's high-performance, power-efficient OMAP processors," said Paul Werp, Director of Marketing for TI's OMAP platform. "TI has helped Symbian define MDF, ensuring that there are standard methods for application developers to take advantage of the advanced Multimedia capabilities of OMAP processor-powered phones using Symbian OS."

Intel
"Intel is pleased to be working closely with Symbian to provide optimized audio and video functions for MDF, based on our Intel^® Integrated Performance Primitives," said Gadi Singer, Vice President and General Manager, Cellular and Handheld Group, Intel. "Customers can now realize the power of Intel^® Wireless MMX™ technology to deliver a new level of multimedia performance in handsets that use Intel XScale^® -based processors and Symbian OS."

ARM
"ARM has worked with Symbian to ensure that audio and video CODECS can take advantage of optimizations in the latest ARM^® processor architectures," said Derek Morris, Director of Multimedia, ARM. "Symbian's Media Device Framework makes it simple for ISVs to provide optimised CODEC solutions or multimedia services to handset manufacturers. Application developers on Symbian OS can use the latest audio and video services confident that the underlying implementations will have been optimised for the specific processor architecture" 

Nokia
"Advanced audio, video and other multimedia services are becoming very popular.. Multimedia application developers need a standard way to access the latest hardware accelerated or optimised multimedia services on mobile devices." said Antti Vasara, Vice President, Terminal Software Sales, Nokia. "Nokia has worked with Symbian, semiconductorsr, software companies and other handset manufacturers to define the Media Device Framework that will benefit all Symbian handset manufacturers and provide developers with access to high performance audio, video and other multimedia services."

Sony Ericsson
"Sony Ericsson provides a second-to-none multimedia experience to consumers. As better performance multimedia services rely more and more on underlying hardware or processor optimisation, it is increasingly important that a mobile OS provides hardware agnostic methods for application developers to make use of underlying acceleration technologies," said Ulf Wretling, Director Developer Programmes, Sony Ericsson.

"We have worked with Symbian on defining the Media Device Framework architecture so that application developers can make use of accelerated Audio and Video and other multimedia services on Symbian OS. It is now simpler for Semiconductor manufacturers to create Symbian OS MDF compliant CODECS and multimedia services thereby expanding the choice of hardware accelerated technologies whilst reducing the integration costs and time to market for device manufacturers such as ourselves."

- Ends -

About Symbian Ltd

Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the global open industry standard operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones.

Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers including Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Publicly announced products based on Symbian OS include the BenQ P30, Motorola A920 and A925 for 3, Sendo X, Siemens SX-1, NTT DoCoMo FOMA F900i, F2102V and F2051 built by Fujitsu, Sony Ericsson P800 and P900 Smartphones, Nokia 9200 Communicator range as well as the 7700, 7650, 6600, 6620, 3650/3600, 3660/3620 and N-Gage.

Symbian  

About ARM

ARM is a registered trademark of ARM Limited. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. “ARM” is used to represent ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM and Nasdaq: ARMHY); its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM Taiwan; ARM France SAS; ARM Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.; and ARM Belgium N.V.

Trademarks
All registered trademarks and other trademarks belong to their respective owners

Media Enquiries

Anatolie Papas Global PR Manager Symbian Software Limited +44 207 154 1383 press@symbian.com