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Rukmini Priyadarshini

A Bangalore-based company has set its sights on the catch it wants in the consumer electronics market. And it is spreading its net with a sure hand.

THE consumer electronics market is probably one reason for the why late phrase about the early bird getting the worm. Heavily biased in favour of the first players with a new product, it lets them grab a 90 per cent share of the market while the others, the latecomers, might as well go home. Hungry.

The wireless multimedia market — personal music devices, cellular telephones, gaming and auto infotainment markets — has original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) scrambling to be the first. One small Bangalore-based player is straddling the OEMs' make-or-buy decision with its range of wireless audio products catering to the personal music device, cell-phone and auto infotainment markets.

eWorld spoke to Impulsesoft's Chief Technical Officer, Bhaskar Subramaniam, on the market and the company's plans. "We offer OEMs complete systems — from embedded software to reference designs to end products — ready to be taken to the mass market," says Bhaskar. For instance, Ten Technologies' prototype Bluetooth wireless transmitter that went into the Apple iPod was licensed from Impulsesoft. Wireless music and audio are exciting and Impulsesoft says they will continue to drive volumes in its target markets for the rest of this decade.

Over 31 million portable players, half a billion cell-phones and six million cars will be shipped in 2006, according to industry projections. Nearly 40 per cent of them will be wireless music-enabled, says Bhaskar. Be it through in-house research or by acquiring smaller design houses or by licensing products, the OEMs want to stay in the race. Impulsesoft works on a non-exclusive licensing model.

Although many OEMs have extensive design and research capabilities, in such a new and emerging market as wireless music, "we still do the market research, once the product concept is defined in the target markets," says Bhaskar.

Impulsesoft works through surveys, questionnaires on dedicated music Web sites that query on product features, purchase price, through design houses and by mapping existing markets to estimate market for new products. The consumer electronics market is very price-sensitive, says Bhaskar.

While a wireless headphone might get a few sophisticated buyers at a price of $99 and a larger number of aspirant buyers at a price point of $45, it is at $25 that a mass market will happen, he says. In the CE market, a product that sells at $99 can only cost $25, because of the number of intermediaries and other marketing costs that are loaded onto it before it reaches the customer. With increasing software control of features, a mass-market purchase price of $25 and a lower cost of production are easier to achieve.

Product definition, architecture and developing a prototype come with Impulsesoft's hardware and software inputs. The prototype is used to shop around the OEMs to get into licensing/royalty agreements before they go into mass production, marketing and distribution, says Bhaskar.

While the core technology driving wireless music remains the same, Impulsesoft is hoping that the different needs of the various market segments will increase the scope of its value-add. That is, the central technology for a wireless stereo headphone for the personal music device and one for the auto infotainment sectors might remain the same, but the car driver needs to be able to answer a call on his cell-phone without having to stop to take off his headphones or stop the car. These user-driven requirements and features will be provided by Impulsesoft, says Bhaskar.

In the cell-phone market, Impulsesoft licensed a remote control jukebox to the Nokia 3650 Symbian phone and last month licensed a streaming music and video-on-display to another customer. A user-selectable dual-channel transmit and receive solution for the auto industry is also being licensed, said Bhaskar.

As the industry constantly tries to strike a balance among media, devices and networks, in the wireless music market, this player says it gets to decide which worm it wants.

Picture by Shaju John

priya@thehindu.co.in

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