Leading fabless semiconductor manufacturer selects Surrogate™ programme

3rd June, 2005 - Frontier Silicon, the leading fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for mobile digital television and DAB digital radio products, has appointed Asia Pacific market access specialists Intralink to drive its business development programme in Japan.

The UK-based company, which received £15m funding in February 2005, has rapidly established itself at the forefront of the digital multimedia revolution, securing a string of impressive contract wins from global brands including Bang & Olufsen, Hitachi, Philips, PURE Digital, Roberts Radio, Samsung, Sharp and Sony.

Under the terms of the long term deal, Intralink will provide its Surrogate™ programme - whereby the company will act as both business development and sales partner for Frontier in the highly competitive Japanese market.

For Frontier Silicon's Chief Executive Anthony Sethill, it was Intralink's unique experience and strong track record in the country's electronics market which prompted the contract award: "Initially, I was highly sceptical about what Intralink could do for us in Japan," he says.

"We already had a distributor and had achieved revenue traction for our DAB chips with a major tier one CE - but we were not getting anywhere with the other CEs. One of our senior people had already worked with Greg Sutch, Intralink's COO Tokyo, so we understood Intralink's strong presence in the market.

"We quickly reached the conclusion that, despite our distributor being a major Japanese player in semiconductors, it was unable to gain traction outside its traditional client base. In the short time that we have worked with Intralink, we have already removed barriers to market acceptance and have dramatically extended our sales bandwidth. Interestingly, after some reluctance, our distributor has embraced the role and the contribution made by Intralink."

Greg Sutch said: "Over 15 years, our Surrogate™ sales model has proved itself a low risk and very effective option for over 50 venture-backed companies that we have assisted. It allows them to gain revenue traction whilst keeping their mid to long term options open. The benefits of this approach have not been lost on the institutions when it comes to the next round of funding."

Intralink CEO James Lawson added: "We have seen the evidence of Frontier's commitment, and achieved results which would not have been possible through a trading house or distributor arrangement. Our approach is low risk, cost effective, transparent and the VCs love it as they are able to see revenues without the handicap or the costs of a more traditional approach."

Frontier Silicon develops and delivers both the broadcast signal receiver modules and digital processing circuits as individual chips and complete system modules to leading consumer electronics and mobile phone brands. As a fabless semiconductor business, Frontier Silicon's core products include complete DAB modules, DVB-T solutions, DMB (digital multimedia broadcasting) solutions, and the underlying system-on-chip (SoC) devices and receiver chips. ends