picoChip passes million chip milestone, announces expansion plans and secures $20M equity funding

The growth in demand for the company’s products is driven by the picoXcell product family that is powering the global deployments of 3G femtocells. With the growth in mobile data traffic, these low-cost plug-and-play infrastructure devices are increasingly viewed as the key to the architecture of all future cellular networks, and have created a multi-million-unit opportunity for picoChip products. picoChip is the only company today shipping large volumes of femtocell silicon, with 25 femtocell customers and products supporting the HSPA+, LTE and TD-SCDMA cellular standards.

“As we execute against our plan we have raised additional equity funding that will set the company on an even steeper growth curve,” said Nigel Toon, CEO of picoChip. “A major shift is happening in the cellular market, creating big opportunities for picoChip. With our field-proven technology, volume shipments and fast revenue growth, this investment allows us to move aggressively to grasp those opportunities.”

As part of its growth plans, picoChip is adding engineers at its development centers in Bath and Beijing, and will move to a new headquarters in Bath, UK. The plans also include accelerated product development in key areas such as LTE, HSPA+ and self-organizing networks.

In a heavily over-subscribed funding round, picoChip’s existing investors Atlas Venture, Highland Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Pond Ventures, Rothschild, Samsung, and Scottish Equity Partners all participated.

“This is an exciting time in picoChip’s life,” commented Jonathan Brooks, picoChip’s Chairman. “Our newly strengthened balance sheet gives us a solid platform on which to base the next phase in the company’s development.”

“The rapid take-up of smartphones and other always-connected devices, the huge growth in data traffic on 3G HSPA networks and the transition to LTE and 4G are disruptive changes for the cellular market,” added Nigel Toon. “Technology advances like ‘flat architecture’ and ‘small cell’ will mean a radical shake-up in the established landscape.”

In addition to residential and enterprise applications, femtocells’ plug-and-play self organizing network technology is also being applied to extend high speed 3G/4G services into buildings and public spaces and to expand coverage and capacity in metro and rural areas.

Twelve cellular network operators, including Vodafone, Softbank and AT&T, have launched femtocell offerings. Of these, the majority use picoChip silicon. picoChip has secured over twenty-five femtocell customers including Alcatel Lucent, Sagem, Ubiquisys and ip.access.

Research from industry analyst ABI indicates that over 60 carriers around the world are engaged in femtocell trials and evaluations, that more than 50% of US households are interested in femtocell products, and that femtocell shipments will exceed 40M units by 2014.