Dublin Tech Business Moves North

An award winning mobile technology company from Dublin, has set up a £2.7 million R&D centre in Belfast with support from Invest Northern Ireland.

The investment in Movidius, just announced by Alastair Hamilton, Invest NI Chief Executive and Sean Mitchell, the company's Chief Executive Officer, is applying revolutionary technology to enable manufacturers of mobile phones and other hand-held devices to offer customers the ability to capture, view and edit high resolution video, directly on their handset, for sharing with family, friends and others on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and You Tube.

Movidius (NI), which is to be located at ECIT (Electronics, Communications and Information Technology Institute) in Titanic Quarter, will provide nine high quality jobs for research engineers in the highly advanced area of silicon chip technology over the next 18 months.

Mr Hamilton said: "This project is focused on highly innovative technology which will position Northern Ireland at the forefront of next generation mobile communications.

"This is industry shaping technology with immense potential in the global marketplace. It represents a quantum leap in the multimedia functionality of mobile devices using silicon technology that also increases the appeal of such devices to customers through significant savings in costs and power consumption.

"The investment is another substantial boost for our strategic focus on attracting projects from globally focused and entrepreneurial businesses with innovative technology. Movidius will provide high value jobs and strengthen our technology base particularly in the dynamic and fast moving mobile communications industry," he added.

Mr Mitchell said: "Our strategic focus is on the design and development of original technologies, such as our multi-core Myriad platform, which allow mobile phone manufacturers to provide their users with superb mobile video and photo experiences."

He also said that the new Belfast centre was selected because of the availability of engineering professionals, particularly those with experience in Embedded Software and System on Chip (SoC) design and development.

"It will develop sophisticated imaging software and semiconductor technology to expand our Myriad based product offerings for a rapidly growing market.

"ECIT is an ideal location for our leading-edge work in micro processing technology because of its proven track record of success, its world class expertise in technologies, including SoC systems, for a wide range of industries and partnerships with global IT businesses," Mr Mitchell concluded.

(BMcC/GK)