Sunplus Technology Extends Relationship with Imagination

Since much earlier license agreements for PowerVR MBX (old days) we haven't heard much from Sunplus. So it was a nice surprise for IMGers to see this PR today:

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG; "Imagination"), a leader in System-on-Chip Intellectual Property ("SoC IP"), has signed a license agreement with Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd. ("Sunplus") (TAIEX: 2401, LSE: SUPD) for IP from Imagination's PowerVR SGX graphics family.
Sunplus will deploy Imagination's PowerVR SGX graphics technology in SoCs targeting the Home Entertainment market.
Says Dr. Archie Yeh, President of Sunplus:
"Advanced graphics performance is becoming increasingly important for future Home Multimedia System. We are pleased to extend our partnership with Imagination Technologies, the leader in embedded graphics, for Sunplus' SoC products."
Says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination:
"We are pleased that, having assessed the available technologies, Sunplus has again selected PowerVR. This latest expansion of our partnership will help both companies to further drive and exploit the latest graphics trends."
Under the terms of its licensing arrangements, Imagination receives licence fees and royalty revenues on SoCs incorporating Imagination's IP.
END

TKS is of course referring to cheaper (but inferior in terms of both graphics ,ecosystem and support) alternatives such as Mali and Vivante.
Sunplus are another Taiwanese player focused on SoCs for BD players, HDTVs and STBs.
ARM continue to make a lot of noise regarding Mali's supposed 70% (?) market share of 3D HW graphics enabled HDTVs, but IMG have the following significant partners in this area:

MStar (2013) - no.1
Mediatek - no.2
LG
Sigma Designs/Trident
Intel
NEC/Renesas
NXP
Sunplus
Fujitsu
SiS
Qualcomm (Display and UCC cores)

IMG will soon be making significant in-roads to that 70% figure imo. Then there's always the prospect of a future real Apple TV...


In other news, Amazon's blowout Q1 revealed the Kindle Fire remains the no.1 item on Amazon.com since launch.  Research firm comScore revealed Kindle Fire has taken 54.4% of US market share of Android tablets in February.
Lastly, Mediatek just came out with Q2 figures and raised their target of smartphone chipsets to 75m for the year (up from 50m) - pretty much all of these are IMG'd (see SoC list). Great stuff !