Frontier Silicon Closes $28 Million Investment led by ACT Venture Capital and Apax Partners' Funds

Frontier Silicon Closes $28 Million Investment led by ACT Venture Capital and Apax Partners' Funds

Funding Round is Supported by Existing Investors Apax Partners Funds, Alta Berkeley and BlueRun Ventures (Formerly Nokia Venture Partners) Plus New Investor Quilvest

LONDON, February 28/PRNewswire/ -- Frontier Silicon - the leading fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for
mobile digital television and DAB digital radio products - has announced it
has closed a $28 million investment round. The lead new investor is ACT
Venture Capital and the round was supported by existing investors including
funds advised by Apax Partners, Alta Berkeley and BlueRun Ventures (formerly
Nokia Venture Partners), and new investor Quilvest. Frontier Silicon was
advised by Citigroup Global Markets Limited in this transaction.

Frontier Silicon has successfully pioneered and helped to grow the DAB
digital radio market since its inception in 2002 and recorded impressive
growth. This latest funding round will enable the company to establish a
leading position in the mobile digital television market, and further develop
its DAB digital radio products.

Anthony Sethill, CEO and founder of Frontier Silicon, said, "We are
pleased to welcome ACT Venture Capital and Quilvest as investors. This latest
investment allows us to aggressively target and drive market share in the
emerging mobile digital television market in the same way that we have
established our chips in over 70 percent of DAB digital radios. Our launch
this month of a mobile digital television chip set has been well received by
key mobile handset manufacturers. This new funding will be used to expand
existing and open new design centres for our future mobile digital television
IC and software products. We will continue to focus on technologies targeted
at the digital radio and television markets, both for the home and mobile
broadcast sectors".

Kieron Branagan, general partner at ACT Venture Capital added, "We are
very excited to be involved with Frontier Silicon at this time as the company
ramps its development of digital broadcasting platforms. The management team
at Frontier Silicon is uniquely positioned to leverage the significant
opportunities afforded by DAB and emerging mobile digital television
standards such as T-DMB and DVB-H."

Frontier Silicon was established in 2001, and is privately funded. Key
shareholders include ACT Venture Capital, Apax Partners Funds, Alta Berkeley,
GLG Partners and BlueRun Ventures, as well as Digital One, operator of one of
the world's largest DAB digital radio networks in the world, and Imagination
Technologies, a leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property for
the multimedia and communications market.

This month Frontier Silicon launched two new chips which enable a
complete solution for receiving terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting
(T-DMB) services on mobile phone handsets; the Apollo chip receives broadcast
signals while the Kino chip provides the digital baseband processing. The
combination provides the world's lowest power consumption and smallest
footprint solution that will allow handset manufacturers to rapidly enable
mobile operators and broadcasters to offer digital broadcast services to
consumers.

Anthony Sethill said about the launch, "The convergence of mobile
communications and broadcasting is happening now, and I believe the addition
of low power TV tuners to mobile handsets will enable the next killer
application for mobile phones, opening up significant new revenue
opportunities for content providers and network operators. Frontier Silicon's
objective is to be one of the key chip suppliers to this new market sector."

Editor's notes:

About Frontier Silicon

Frontier Silicon is an award-winning company at the forefront of the
digital multimedia revolution with a range of semiconductor solutions for
mobile digital television, digital TV and digital radio.

The company develops and delivers both the broadcast signal receiver
modules and digital processing circuits as individual chips and complete
system modules to leading consumer electronics and mobile phone brands.

As a fabless semiconductor business, Frontier Silicon's core products
include complete DAB modules, DVB-T solutions, DMB (digital multimedia
broadcasting) solutions, and the underlying system-on-chip (SoC) devices and
receiver chips.

Key customers for the company's products include consumer electronic,
automotive entertainment and PDA/mobile phone manufacturers such as Bang &
Olufsen, Cambridge Audio, Goodmans, Grundig, Hitachi, Ministry of Sound,
Philips, PURE Digital, Roberts Radio, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and TEAC. Frontier
Silicon has won a number of awards and its products have also enabled
award-winning consumer products. The company's awards include the Fabless
Semiconductor Association's start-up to watch award, PricewaterhouseCoopers
hottest technology company of 2004 award, the World Economic Forum's
technology pioneers to watch 2005, and the Tornado T100 award for one of the
best-performing and innovative high-tech private companies. For more
information visit www.frontier-silicon.com

About ACT Venture Capital

ACT Venture Capital is Ireland's largest venture capital management
company. It is funded by leading Irish, European and US institutional and
fund of fund investors. ACT invests primarily in information &
communications technology and life sciences companies in Ireland and the
UK which possess innovative technologies aimed at international markets.
ACT has a portfolio of over 30 such companies and funds under management
of EUR350 million.

About Quilvest

The Quilvest Group is a global financial group operating
in Europe and in the US with 6 billion dollars under management. Quilvest has
been investing both in funds and private companies for more than 30 years,
with a continuous commitment to venture.

Source: Frontier Silicon Ltd

Contact: Anthony Sethill, CEO, Frontier Silicon, Tel: +44-(0)-1923-474200, Fax: +44-(0)1923-202251, Email: press@frontier-silicon.com

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Profile: intent