Nokia invests $4 million in Summit Microelectronics

"Mobile phones no longer just make voice calls, but connect to the Internet and act as our mobile camera, music player, navigation device, and even our mobile television. This growing functionality raises the importance of power management. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Growth Partners is pleased to lead this investment round. Summit has assembled a world-class team specializing on these issues and has built unique products to help meet the rising power performance demands of mobile device manufacturers,” said Rob Trice, of Nokia Growth Partners.

"Having the world’s largest user of power management ICs help fund our growth is very exciting,” added Pat Brockett, Summit’s President and CEO. "It reinforces our belief that Summit’s technology will become pervasive in consumer and battery powered applications. The challenges of increasing complexity and battery run-time, coupled with tighter time-to-market pressure, have rendered the traditional ‘hard-wired’ analog building-block approach obsolete."

“Summit’s programmable power management technology is ideal for portable and handheld systems with applications ranging from intelligent battery management to powering next generation organic LED (OLED) displays,” continued Brockett.

Source: Business Wire

Let’s hope they actually produce something that will end up in our mobile phones, hopefully in a few years.