BENGALURU & DEHLI, India & BALTIMORE, Md.—The long-awaited dream of Next-Gen TV reception on mobile phones took a big step forward today with the joint announcement that Saankhya Labs and Sinclair are collaborating on the design and launch of a variety of Direct-to-Mobile broadcast consumer devices in India.
With 1.05 billion cell phone users in India, the announcement could Next-Gen TV in cell phones on a trajectory that may one day see affordable handsets with ATSC 3.0 receivers becoming available to U.S. consumers.
The devices being produced in India will be powered by Saankhya’s Pruthvi-3 ATSC 3.0 chipsets. The company has done pioneering work on bringing to market broadcast radio heads for cellularization of single frequency networks (SFNs) and building the Mark One reference design of a 3.0-enabled D2M smartphone, Sinclair said.
“As India’s foremost fabless chip company, Saankhya is delighted to see this path breaking D2M technology getting one step closer to launch,” said Parag Naik, founder and CEO of Saankhya Labs. “For rapid proliferation of the device ecosystem, we are actively working with a number of mobile device suppliers to develop solutions that integrate our award-winning Software Defined Radio (SDR) chipsets. As an end-to-end originator and supplier of D2M technology – chipsets, radios, software and network infrastructure, we are fully equipped to rapidly validate end-to-end performance and gear up for launch.”
The consumer D2M trials, expected to begin in the first half of 2025, will include smartphones, USB dongle accessories, set-top box/gateways and low-cost featurephones. The goal is so demonstrate interworking with mobile system-on-a-chip from suppliers with a combined global market share of 70%, it said.
“I firmly believe that low-cost featurephones will be the biggest driver for domestic demand in India since 4G/5G, incentivizing over 300 million featurephone users to shift to broadcast-enabled phones at a low incremental cost. We expect to launch these devices for trials in the first half of 2025. This competitive market segment can be expected to produce affordable phones for the Indian and global markets,” said Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley. “ATSC 3.0’s time and frequency interleaving feature provides excellent mobile performance, which is why we played a foundational role in the creation and deployment of the standard for next generation broadcast.”
Leading brands recognize the consumer value proposition of D2M service and are gearing up to meet the requirements of the Indian market, said Sumeet Nindrajog, director of FreeStream, India’s first and only Chips to Platform Deep Tech startup. "D2M will ride on the tremendous momentum to expand the mobile technology supply chain in India. As India’s first Chips-to-Platform DeepTech startup, FreeStream is working on putting together a D2M ecosystem that will realize PM Modi’s vision of India’s Techade.”
More information is available on the Sinclair and Saankhya Labs websites.
