Feature Story

IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES PIMPS OUT ITS SDK

Imagination Technologies (IMG) is a firm with a confident swagger about it these days. The company just released its new SDK and is “pimping it out” at every opportunity.

David Harold, director of PR for IMG, recently told TechEye that although he felt the SDK was worth hundreds of dollars, the firm was passing it out for free and giving out hundreds of the kits to developers on CD-ROMs, as well as having a downloadable version up online.

“We could make a lot of money out of it if we wanted to monetise it, but we don’t,” he told us. Of course, IMG is not playing developer soup kitchen out of the goodness of its heart, more developers developing means more apps to take advantage of IMG’s tech in a world where content is king.

“The richer the content on mobile devices, the faster IMG will grow, so we see it as essential to encourage developers,” Harold told us.

“This community is important to us, especially in a world where mobile is exceeding consoles.”

And mobile really is becoming a focus for IMG, which believes more portable devices will really cut into the desktop business.

“Power consumption will have to continue to go lower and lower, and people just don’t want fans anymore,” he said noting this was some of the reason why set top boxes had seen a sudden explosion in popularity.

Of course, IMG is also collaborating very intensely with Intel on set top boxes, and says the chip giant’s business is “incredibly important to us.”

Intel is a very major shareholder in IMG, and the two firms are working together on Intel’s Sodaville (C4100) plans for set top boxes and digitally wonderous TVs.

“Power consumption and performance per watt is very, very important to us,” Harold added.

More, er, less power to ‘em then!

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