NXP Ships 30 Millionth Low-IF Tuner for Car Radios

12th July 2010

ES Admin

0 0

NXP Semiconductors today announced that it has shipped its 30 millionth low-IF tuner for car radios. The TEF66xx family of highly integrated tuners offers a broad range of options for both aftermarket and OEM manufacturers: from the low-cost TEF662x series for the cost-sensitive analog car radio market, to the high-performance TEF660x and TEF661x series, which offer different feature sets and price points to address a wide range of requirements including optional RDS.

“Using NXP’s innovative low-IF architecture, the TEF66xx family of car radio tuners incorporates all critical RF components on a single chip, freeing up space on the main board to support the ever-increasing number of features consumers are looking for in the car radio head unit,” said Jacob Hooker, product marketing manager of car radio business line at NXP Semiconductors. “By eliminating the need for manual alignment, NXP’s low-IF tuners can be easily designed into the main board without in-depth RF know-how.”

According to a recent report by iSuppli, NXP was ranked number 1 in the global automotive infotainment semiconductor market in 2009, due to the strong performance of its AM/FM tuner and audio processing products, as well as its audio amplifiers, in China. The low-cost TEF662x series is now a leading car radio tuner in China, with 8 million ICs shipped since its launch last year.

“The excellent price/performance, adaptability and highly integrated features of the NXP TEF662x series helped to accelerate our time to market, greatly reducing costs and improving the market competitiveness of Hangsheng products,” said Huafeng Cheng, director of Shenzhen Hangsheng Electronics. “As a leading enterprise in China specializing in automobile electronics, Hangsheng attaches great importance to our relationship with NXP.”

The NXP TEF660x and TEF661x series are designed and tested for automotive-grade quality – a key requirement for OEMs. The first TEF660x tuners were released in September 2008, and were the first alignment-free, low-IF car radio tuners on the market. The tuners eliminate the need for external IF transformer coils and ceramic filters, as well as external RF applications, by providing integrated AM, FM, LNA and AGC, as well as a fully integrated VCO. An integrated RDS demodulator and/or decoder are available with the TEF661x tuner.

“Superior in-car audio sound is important to JVC. The high-performance NXP TEF660x tuners help us to deliver high-quality sound with a small footprint which allows us to build many advanced features into our car radio systems,” said Mr. Tamotsu Komai, Senior Chief Engineer, R&D Center, JVC Electronics Singapore Pte.Ltd. “The elegance of NXP’s solution and the strength of its ongoing support have meant that NXP continues to be one of our top suppliers.”