When Texas Instruments comes to mind, most folks still might think calculators or educational toys. That's because the chip giant has largely been a behind-the-scenes player for the last two decades.
Though it flopped at selling PCs, TI has played a major role in the mobile phone revolution; the company's digital signal processors run about half the world's mobile phones. It has also carved out a significant place in the digital TV market with its digital light processing (DLP) technology, digitally controlled mirrors that are inside TVs from Samsung and others. TI is now working with Hollywood to retrofit cinemas for the digital era. A major announcement is expected on 8 September.
Richard Templeton, who's worked at the company since graduating from college in 1980, became chief executive last year. He recently spoke with ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com to discuss TI's rivalry with Intel, the future of electronics and why the world needs fancy mobile phones.
Q: In entertainment, the music industry has made the jump to digital. How are the other segments doing in that regard?
A: In home theatre and digital cinema, the technology side of that is pretty much solved. If you look at a DLP-based cinema, you can put up a better looking movie; it's scratch-free, and it looks as good the hundredth time as it did the first time because the film isn't wearing out.
There has been this kind of chicken and the egg stall, though, over who will pay for the [cinema] upgrades. We are seeing that start to get results. The theatre exhibitors are coming to agreements with some of the content people. I think you are going to actually see good growth outside of the US, in fact probably before you see it in the US
Where else are companies using DLPs?
Most people want to talk about TVs because that's what people can personally relate to. But the projector business is still 60 percent of our DLP business. Historically, those projectors have been the kind of thing that you would use in a conference room. But increasingly, with prices going under $1,000, you are finding those projectors ending up at home on weekends, with DVD players, Xboxes and PlayStations hooked to them.
HP and Radio Shack have a product that I call home [cinema] in a box. You can buy a single box; it's got a DVD player, the DLP projector and...
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