BIZCHINA / Deng Zhonghan
Technology innovations make the mark
Updated: 2006-03-14 11:21
Deng Zhonghan, founder and chairman of Vimicro Corporation, won the
Economic Man of the Year award for leading the Beijing-based multimedia
semiconductor technology company in its innovative work in designing
digital multimedia chips used in digital cameras, mobile phones and PC
cameras.
The chips developed by Vimicro have reportedly captured 60 percent of the
world market share. The IT enterprise, with its own intellectual property
right and core technology, made a successful debut on the United State's
NASDAQ board in November 2005.
Vimicro was founded in 1999, with 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) of
venture capital from the country's Ministry of Information Industry.
Challenges followed one by one at a time when few believed a Chinese
company could develop its own chips. The scientific research environment
was rather poor and there were no clients. Despite of all these negative
factors, Deng and his colleagues developed the chips in 2001 and quickly
launched them on the market.
In May 2001, many local newspapers published the same news: Starlight I,
China's first Grand Scale Integration (or GSI) chipset with an
independent patent, had entered the international market and been adopted
in the latest imaging product lines from companies like Samsung, Philips
etc.. Chip design is one of the core technologies in the information
industry, but China had long suffered from the lack of its own chipset
manufacturers, and thus felt restrained in market competition. The launch
of Starlight I changed all this.
Deng Zhonghan said, "More than 150 users are buying our products every
month worldwide. Starlight I chipsets account for 70-80 percent of the
market share in the PC camera and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)
markets."
The company responsible for developing this chip is Vimicro Electronics
Corporation, an enterprise started by returned students. Deng Zhonghan,
founder of the company, was once a senior research fellow at IBM and
founded a microchip company in Silicon Valley. In 1999, when the
Information Industry was growing briskly in the US and his company was
facing a bright future, Deng came back to China.
Deng also said, "Why did you choose to come back under these
circumstances? I felt very encouraged and honored to have been invited by
the State Council to take part in the National Day celebrations in 1999.
I'd seen that on the one hand China was developing very fast, while on
the other there was still a great shortfall in the development of core
technology and integrated circuits etc here. There was a lot of room for
us professionals to cooperate or collaborate. It was under these
conditions that Vimicro was established."
Deng has a broad academic background including a PhD in electrical
engineering, an MS in economics and an MS in physics from the University
of California at Berkeley.
As a well-known scholar, Deng's return to China caused quite a stir in
the Silicon Valley. Five PhDs resigned from big name companies such as HP
and Microsoft and came back with him to set up the company. In the past
four years, Deng Zhonghan has led Vimicro in developing a series of
chipsets that have enjoyed a sales volume of over 5 million sets
worldwide, with a value of over 40 billion RMB.
Deng add, "In the short space of four years, we've attracted back many
overseas students. At the same time, we've made some breakthroughs in the
field of core technology. These four years of development demonstrate
that the nation's policies toward returned students as well as its
policies for invigorating the country through science and technology have
been well implemented. "
(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)
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