Graphics card vendor boosts mobile chip offering

Graphics card vendor ATI has acquired Finnish firm Bitboys for around $44m to give more clout to its mobile phone multimedia offerings.

ATI said the Bitboys team will be fully integrated in to its Handheld Business Unit and be central to its key design centre for ATI in Europe.
The acquisition will also boost ATI's product portfolio with a number of technologies, including OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics and OpenVG 1.0 2D vector graphics technologies optimised for high-volume mainstream mobile phones. ATI called vector graphics “vital” for a multimedia product line up. The technology, it claimed, will become the standard for creating user interfaces on mobile devices as it is a compact format that allows more graphics to be stored on a phone.
"ATI gives us what we need to reach the next level," said Mikko Saari, chief executive of Bitboys. "Its market presence and ability to sell our products as part of a complete multimedia line up will prove incredibly valuable to us. It's a classic win-win, realising value for both companies."