Gionee and u-blox to bring series of GPS-enabled mobile phones to the Chinese market

Thalwil, Switzerland – June 9, 2009 – u-blox, a leading fabless provider of embedded positioning and wireless communications solutions, is pleased to announce that Gionee Communications, a leading provider of mobile phone solutions to the Chinese market, has chosen u-blox’ GPS receiver chip for their new series of GPS-enabled feature phones. The first model, L800, was introduced to the Chinese market in April 2009.

u-blox’ cost-efficient UBX-G5010 single-chip GPS receiver was chosen based on its accurate positioning, high jamming immunity, and low power consumption. This enables Gionee to drive GPS into mainstream mobile phones while ensuring affordable location-based services for on-the-go consumers. u-blox’ GPS technology gives Gionee’s mobile phones the ability to operate in challenging environment, especially weak signal conditions typical of metropolitan areas and deep indoor environments.

“With GPS demand increasing due to booming location-based services, we needed a high quality affordable single-chip solution that would enable us to fuel GPS adoption in feature phones,” said Mr. Zhang Gaoxian, VP of Marketing, Gionee. “We chose u-blox' single-chip because it is cost effective while offering low power consumption in a very small and easily integrated package. This, coupled with its remarkable indoor performance and high accuracy, makes UBX-5010 the ideal chip for our phones.”

"As the use of location-based services grows, delivering differentiated handsets with increasing levels of functionality is becoming a major design consideration in order to remain competitive,” said Adrian Tan, VP Sales Asia. We are seeing increased interest from customers for GPS and assisted GPS technologies and are proud that u-blox' solution was chosen by Gionee to support these exciting new services in China.”