Chinese high-tech company Vimicro has broken decades-long foreign dominance in the digital multimedia CPU chip sector with the success of its Xingguang digital multimedia CPU chip, marking a milestone in China's integrated circuit (IC) industry, said a top government official.

After five years of development, the made-in-China Xingguang digital multimedia CPU chip occupies over 40 percent of the world market and 80 percent of Chinese sales.

This is a crucial breakthrough for China's integrated circuit (IC) industry in research and development as well as the industrialization of core technologies, said Zhang Qi, director of the Electronic Information Administration Department at the Ministry of Information Industry.

"China now stands in the upper reaches of the 3C (consumer electronics, computers and communications) industrial chain and has a say in the formulation of industrial standards, which will influence related industrial sectors in the lower reaches," Zhang added.

By the end of 2003, over 10 million Vimicro Xingguang digital multimedia CPU chips were sold to 16 foreign nations and regions, including the United States, Japan, South Korea and some European countries.

A group of leading domestic and overseas IT companies, including Microsoft, HP, Samsung, Philips, Foxconn, Fujitsu, Legend, China Telecom and China Netcom, have become clients of Vimicro.

So far, Vimicro's Xingguang digital multimedia CPU chip holds over 200 patent technologies at home and abroad, according to Deng Zhonghan, president of the Vimicro Corporation.

As a private high-tech enterprise operated by returning overseas students, Vimicro has benefited from preferential policies offered by the central government and Beijing's Zhongguancun Science Park.

(China Daily January 15, 2004)