Introducing Team Staccato

This week at the Certified Wireless USB Developers Conference in San Jose, Staccato Communications is introducing its Team Staccato partner program with a series of demonstrations by partner companies to offer what company Vice President of Business Development and Corporate Marketing Mark Bowles calls “one-stop shopping for everything you need.”

Team Staccato is starting, Bowles says, with an inaugural group of 14 companies working together to provide different parts of the total solution around Staccato’s silicon. “It’s a collection of diverse companies, so the partnership means different things to each one, but it really collects the entire ecosystem that’s required to surround our silicon getting to market,” he says.

According to Bowles, Staccato’s mission is a simple one: to become the world’s leading supplier of ultrawideband technology. “If there’s an analogue to what we want to be, in the Bluetooth space, it would be Cambridge Silicon Radio; or in the Wi-Fi space, it would be Atheros or Broadcom,” he says.

Staccato stands out, Bowles says, by offering the only single-chip CMOS solution for Wireless USB. “Everything you can put into silicon we put into CMOS silicon,” he says. “Everything you can’t, but that’s still required, we put into a module, a System-in-Package that surrounds the silicon – so literally all you need to add is the antenna, and give it power and data, and you have a complete Wireless USB node.”

A single-chip CMOS solution, Bowles says, is really the only way to meet the price point and the power consumption the market requires. “This has been proven in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – single-chip CMOS dominates those markets, and there’s a very good reason for it,” he says. “We’re not the only guys with CMOS, but we’re going to be the first to market, shipping products this year.”

Bowles says the company expects to see dongles and hubs available by the end of the year, with PCs, printers, digital cameras and MP3 players following in 2007. “That’s not just from Taiwanese ODMs, but from all of the major brands in each of those markets,” he says. Mobile phone handsets and home A/V solutions should follow in 2008, Bowles says, with headsets, keyboards and mice arriving in 2009.

Earlier this month, Staccato announced three new Taiwanese ODM customers – AboCom, Cameo and Cellink – all of which are producing Wireless USB dongles and hubs. “The reason they chose us is that we were the quickest and the easiest design – it’s really our chip and not much else,” Bowles says. “It’s a single-sided board, it’s high performance, and the CMOS results in low cost as well.”

Additionally, Staccato is now working with test equipment provider AIT. “These guys are a really important piece of the food chain, because they build inexpensive but very efficient and high-speed production test equipment for the Taiwanese ODMs,” Bowles says. “They picked Staccato to develop equipment around, and we’re proud of that relationship.”

It’s a busy week, to say the least – a number of partners will be demonstrating Staccato’s silicon in their booths or suites at the Certified Wireless USB Developers conference. “There’s RF test demonstrations with LeCroy and Agilent; Tektronix in our own Staccato booth; protocol test demonstrations by LeCroy and Catalyst; and the software driver vendor Stonestreet One,” Bowles says.

Looking ahead, Bowles anticipates a bright future for Staccato (of course). “In UWB, I think, there will be one IPO, and we think it’ll be Staccato,” he says. “That’s our path, because we’re the only single-chip CMOS, and that’s what won CSR the IPO position, and that’s what won Atheros the IPO position. It’s the only thing that really ends up mattering in these markets.”