The first portable multimedia player (PMP) designed by a Chinese company using its own proprietary technologies was put on sale in Shenzhen on Monday.
The maker, Shenzhen Techno Science Technology R&D Co., spent one year working out its own operating system, an embedded multimedia processing software, for the PMP.
Shenzhen Techno's operating system has a better compatibility with documents of different formats, including .asf, .wmv, .avi, .wav, .swf, MPEG-1, MP4 and .rm and .rmvb, which are popular online.
The PMP has a 20G mini hard disk and a battery that can work five hours. It can also be used as a digital camera and a digital video camera.
Zhu Mingcheng, president of Shenzhen Techno, said it was the very first time for a Chinese company to develop and patent a PMP.
China is the world's leading supplier of DVD players, accounting for about 80 percent of the world's total production. But the country's exports dropped substantially after domestic makers had to pay a patent fee to international DVD developers including Hitachi and Philips.
Zhu said the company knew how important it was to have its own intellectual property rights so they spent much time and capital in developing their own operating system.
"We don't have to pay patent fees to foreign companies but can sell our patent authorization to other PMP makers now. We have received orders from PMP makers from Panama and Turkey,” said Zhu.
(Shenzhen Daily August 24, 2005)
