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In an endorsement for wireless video networking, Panasonic and Samsung said today they have invested an undisclosed amount into SiBEAM, the maker of high-speed networking chips.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based SiBEAM makes WirelessHD chips that can wirelessly transfer video from one device to another in a living room. The SiBEAM chip sets operate in the 60 gigahertz band of the wireless spectrum. It’s difficult to make radio chips that operate at that frequency, but there is very little interference.

The networking speeds are fast enough to transfer high-definition video over short ranges in a living room. Wi-Fi networking is in place in many homes for wireless Internet access, but HD video is very demanding and requires better speed and quality measures to be moved wirelessly without a loss in picture quality or frame rate. That’s why SiBEAM and its rivals have been working on better technology.

The move shows that big consumer electronics manufacturers still believe in wireless video networking despite the failure of WiQuest, one of the chip makers in the rival Ultrawideband, or UWB, camp. But UWB radios can only transfer data at about 110 megabits per second over 10 meters.

Wireless video has been promoted as the key technology needed to simplify the networking of all sorts of online-connected gadgets, including game consoles, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes and computers.

SiBEAM is garnering support for a consortium built around its WirelessHD standard. That group includes Panasonic and Samsung. Other members include Broadcom, Intel, LG Electronics, NEC, Sony, and Toshiba. But the big consumer electronics companies are also spreading their bets to ensure that some kind of wireless video takes off. While Panasonic has been a backer of SiBEAM since 2006, Samsung and Sony have embraced multiple solutions.

Sony has used proprietary wireless technology from Israel’s Amimon on a new Bravia flat-panel TV that is being launched in Europe and Japan. Samsung is also a member of a group of companies that is trying to turn Amimon’s technology into the WHDI standard. The Amimon solution is slower than SiBEAM’s since it uses the 5-gigahertz radio spectrum, which is crowded with different wireless devices.

John LeMoncheck, chief executive of SiBEAM, said in an interview that support is shifting to WirelessHD as product launches near. SiBEAM has been sampling its chips for a few months now, but LeMoncheck declined to talk about volume production. He said that products are expected to be on store shelves in 2009.

SiBEAM was founded in 2004 by a team of University of California at Berkeley researchers. They wanted to make chips that transfer data using the 60-gigahertz band of the radio specturm. The company raised a seed round of $1.25 million from New Enterprise Associates and US Venture Partners. In 2005, the company raised $15 million from NEA, USVP and Foundation Capital. In August 2006, SiBEAM raised $21 million from the same second-round investors. Earlier this year, it raised a $40 million round led by NEA. The company has 90 employees.

Looks like SanDisk has figured out a way to avoid Samsung’s hostile takeover offer. Toshiba and SanDisk said today that Toshiba will pay $1 billion to gain a larger stake in their joint venture in flash memory chip manufacturing.

Under the deal, Milpitas, Calif.-based SanDisk has agreed to sell 30 percent of the manufacturing capacity of the joint venture to Toshiba, reducing SanDisk’s own capital spending costs. The venture currently operates two chip factories. The extra cash and reduced production will help SanDisk weather a downward spiral in flash memory pricing. Toshiba, meanwhile, is likely to gain market share.

Toshiba said that average annual consumption of memory bits is increasing 200 percent, largely through increasing use of NAND flash memory in cell phones, digital camcorders, solid-state drives for computers, and music players. In case of a market upturn, SanDisk has the option to buy back some capacity. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2009. SanDisk’s stock price is trading at $13.71 a share now. In the joint venture, the two companies split the costs for building the factories and also split the output of flash chips.

A month ago, Samsung made a hostile $5.8 billion buyout offer for SanDisk. SanDisk said the $26 a share offer was too low. The new deal suggests SanDisk has an alternative. But it could also put to rest rumors that Toshiba itself would make an offer for SanDisk. The pricing downturn is so severe that Micron Technology said earlier this month it would lay off 3,000 workers, or 15 percent of its work force.

“Ever since Samsung made public its desire to acquire SanDisk the industry has been abuzz with rumors of a Toshiba takeover,” said Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis.  “Although the SanDisk-Toshiba partnership would do better without a Samsung acquisition, Toshiba made it clear that a takeover was not in the cards.  This move appears to be [SanDisk's] alternative.”

SanDisk reports its third-quarter results after the market close today. Analysts expect the company to report a loss of 27 cents on revenue of $778.1 million, according to Thomson Reuters. A year ago, SanDisk reported adjusted income of 54 cents a share on revenue of $1.04 billion.

Update: SanDisk reported a loss (non-GAAP) of 59 cents a share, or $132 million, on revenues of $821.5 million. Falling prices led to a $109 million inventory charge. During a conference call, SanDisk chief executive Eli Harari said the industry continues to experience excessive inventories and weakening balance sheets because of over-capacity. A few years back, industry players built too many factories.

But Harari said “patience will be rewarded” as demand for flash products continues to skyrocket. He said the company expects to cut costs, including laying off employees and existing some businesses, in the coming months. He also noted that SanDisk’s patent portfolio is getting stronger. (A recent ruling against Samsung,in favor of SanDisk, is presumably one reason Samsung wants to buy SanDisk).

The company said it priced more aggressively than it planned to move inventory. In the current quarter, the company predicts “less seasonal lift” in sales in the fourth quarter than in the past. Revenues are expected to be $725 million to $825 million in the quarter. The company expects to lose money through the second half of 2009. Harari said that he expects 770 million handsets will sell with slots for flash memory cards. About three gigabytes is expected average of flash in smart phones. But  he noted that flash memory prices are about as easy to predict as oil prices.

Here’s the latest action:

Credit beginning to thaw? — Bank borrowing costs fell slightly on Tuesday, a possible first sign that credit is beginning to flow between institutions again. Analysis at Calculated Risk.

Google’s search market share dips — The latest ComScore numbers show that Google gained more users in September, but lost percentage market share to Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask. AOL was the only other of the top five search engines to see its market share drop.

Jive Software goes through round of layoffs — Sequoia Capital portfolio company Jive Software has taken the venture firm’s gloomy advice to heart and laid off 38 people, according to an ex-employee’s blog.

Lending clubs step in to replace banks — Peer-to-peer lending, in which people lend other people that they don’t know small amounts of money, is taking off due to the credit crunch, according to Economix.

Want a bigger brain? Take Internets — Middle-aged and older patients in a hospital study experienced brain stimulation when searching the Internet, suggesting that web surfing may counteract the unfortunate effects of aging on the brain.

Biofuel private equity firm gives up on fund — Biofuels Capital Partners, a PE firm that was aiming for a $300 million raise, has given up and disintegrated, according to peHUB.

Targetspot becomes largest Internet radio ad network — Targetspot acquired the oddly-named Ronning Lipset Radio to become the largest player in the $500 million industry.

PC sales rise, but low-margin goods dominate — Growth in sales of PCs last quarter was led by low-cost, web-based computers, according to Gartner. However, the economic slowdown is likely to impact even low-end electronics.

Samsung entering the US laptop market — Following the above news item on PCs, this one should make Dell, HP and other big manufacturers groan: South Korean electronics giant Samsung plans to sell laptops in the US.

Top spam network shut down – Chicago courts have ordered that one of the largest spam networks, called HerbalKing, be shut down, in accordance with a Federal Trade Commission request. Several members of the network, which is being called a “gang”, will likely face charges.

Latest Microsoft bug fix is actually just a bug – A new notification email popping up in inboxes mimics Microsoft to infect users with a Trojan virus. But don’t worry; Microsoft is working hard on Windows 7.

Broadcom founder’s sentencing delayed until next year – Broadcom’s Henry Samueli, who pleaded guilty in June to lying to Federal investigator, will have until August 2009 to enjoy his freedom.

If I got a $5.8 billion acquisition offer, I’d take it. But some people think that’s small beans. Samsung Electronics said today it was going public with a hostile bid for SanDisk after four months of talks failed to result in an agreement.

Samsung said in a letter that it has offered $26 a share in cash for SanDisk. That’s a 96 percent premium over the price of SanDisk shares on Sept. 4, a day before news of the talks broke. Samsung said that SanDisk’s response indicated it was clinging to unrealistic expectations of its market value. SanDisk said the offer undervalues the value of its flash memory chip business, which has been in a tough state due to over-production. Eli Harari, chief executive of SanDisk, said that Samsung was opportunistically trying to take advantage of an industry-wide downturn.

Samsung and SanDisk both make NAND flash memory chips, which are used to store data in portable electronics because they can retain data without electrical currents. Digital cameras use flash, as do other devices where removing the memory is a useful feature.

Heavy use of storage in cell phones for storing camera phone pictures and video has led to skyrocketing demand. But over-capacity has led to a collapse in NAND chip pricing SanDisk’s stock price has fallen 76 percent in the past year. SanDisk shares rose 53 percent to $23 a share in after-hours trading.

Jim Handy, a longtime flash market analyst at Objective Analysis in Los Gatos, Calif., said that SanDisk has every reason to expect that its stock price will rebound beyond its 52-week high of $55.98 a share.  He said he expects the industry to rebound and stock prices as well — but supply and demand in the industry may not bounce back until the middle of 2009. Meanwhile, SanDisk is in the middle of negotiations with Samsung over patent licenses under which Samsung is paying SanDisk hundreds of millions each year.

“We see this as a very shrewd move by Samsung to take advantage of a confluence of favorable circumstances,” Handy said.

In 2007, the combination of Samsung and SanDisk accounted for about 50 percent of the NAND market. Hence, the combination might run into antitrust troubles. Handy said he doubts the merger will succeed.

Talk of Apple’s iPhone forcing competitors in the mobile industry to adapt has largely been focused on its large multi-touch display and more recently, the App Store. But there’s another, small feature that never ceases to wow new iPhone owners: Visual Voice Mail.

It’s been around since the launch of the initial iPhone last year, but now competitors are starting to figure out that customers like it. First, Sprint licensed the feature for its Samsung Instinct phone, now Verizon is getting into the act, announcing Visual Voice Mail for its customers.

But there’s just one problem: It’s not free. Verizon is charging $2.99 per line to activate the feature. AT&T, by contrast, offers it as a standard included feature on all iPhones. When word of this feature first leaked out a few weeks ago, the assumption was it would be a free service from Verizon as well. It is not.

Verizon’s Visual Voice Mail will first be available on the LG Voyager phone but will soon come to other devices on the network. It says you can store up to 40 messages for up to 40 days.

Klausner Technologies owns the patents for Visual Voice Mail and made sure everyone knew that by suing AT&T and Apple not once, but twice. The sides finally settled in June, with Apple agreeing to license the technology from Klausner.

AOL plans to shutter a bunch of businesses: Among the businesses on the chopping block are Bluestring, Xdrive, and AOL Pictures.

Apple is testing update for iPhone software: Apple is testing version 2.1 of its iPhone firmware. It includes improved location features.

Vonage getting new CEO? The Wall Street Journal reported that Vonage Holdings Corp. CEO Jeffrey Citron will step down next week and appoint a new CEO. The VoIP phone service company also said it has signed a letter with Silver Point Finance setting the terms and conditions for up to $215 million in private debt financing of which Silver Point has committed to provide $125 million.

Solar firm to build more: First Solar, which has designed efficient thin-film solar cells, announced plans to build another solar cell production plant in Nevada.

Sprint Nextel offloads its towers to reduce debt: The struggling U.S. mobile carrier agreed to sell nearly all its cellphone towers to a private-equity-backed firm called TowerCo in a deal that will generate about $670 million in cash.

Microsoft debuts robotic receptionist: Chief Strategy Officer Craig Mundie showed off a virtual robot receptionist that could recognize speech and see objects so that it could perform rudimentary greeting services for a company.

Both Walt Mossberg (subscription required) and David Pogue panned Apple’s MobileMe service: Apple’s new productivity synchronization service got low marks from its biggest fans as columnists at both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times panned the product for spotty performance.

Samsung’s financials disappoint: The Korean electronics giant failed to meet second-quarter expectations as results suffered from a weak memory chip market and falling margins on flat-screen TVs.

Microsoft shows off fake Mojave operating system: As a gimmick to show that Windows Vista isn’t so bad, Microsoft played a trick on focus groups with people who were fans of Windows XP. It showed them a faux new operating system prototype, code-named Mojave — which was in fact Windows Vista — and came back with a 90-percent favorable result.

I complain quite often about needing too many set top boxes to make the ultimate living room entertainment center. Really though, it’s not the boxes themselves that drive me crazy as much as its their wires. While wireless power may still be a ways off, a step has been taken towards wireless connections with the television.

Sony, Samsung, Motorola, Sharp and Hitachi are joining together to work with an Israeli company, Amimon Ltd., to make a new standard for wireless high definition picture transfer, according to USA Today. The technology is called Wireless Home Digital Interface, or WHDI.

“If you have a TV in the home, that TV will be able to access any source in the home, whether it’s a set-top box in the living room, or the PlayStation in the bedroom, or a DVD player in another bedroom. That’s the message of WHDI,” said Noam Geri, co-founder of Amimon.

Televisions built with WHDI connections could arrive as soon as next year and only cost perhaps $100 more.

Of course, as USA Today also notes, both Sony and Samsung are also backing a competing standard, WirelessHD. We call that, “hedging your bet.”

[photo: flickr/theople]

Ringfree Mobility is seeking a round of funding to expand its mobile Internet voice calling solution for smart phones including the iPhone.

The company is entering a crowded space, as Matt Marshall wrote last week in a profile of a couple of competitors, Fring and Nimbuzz. But Ringfree Mobility believes it has a user-friendly solution.

The San Francisco company began beta testing its RF Dialer application in February. Like other voice-over-Internet-protocol services (VoIP), RF Dialer and its backend service, RF.com, enables cell phone users to make cheap international calls for pennies a minute. No software installation is required. The company’s motto is “call everywhere from anywhere with no hassle.”

The company believes it has simplified the process of using an iPhone or other smart phones. You sign up on its web site and can start making calls within a minute. You then put the web page icon for RF.com on the iPhone’s main screen. To make a call with an iPhone, a user clicks on an RF.com icon. A dial pad pops up. The user can select the type of call to be made from a pull down menu, with choices including Skype calls.

Here’s where it’s different. The choices on the menu also include GoogleTalk, YahooTalk, MSN Messenger, AIM, VOIP services such as Vonage or Gizmo, or an office phone system such as Asterisk. The RF Dialer is like a replacement for the iPhone’s built-in dialing application. Ringfree Mobility is not a phone company itself and so you can use any calling service you want with it. It doesn’t compete with the mobile carriers, and it also doesn’t compete with the VoIP service providers.

If the user selects the Skype service on the menu, then the user uses the iPhone keypad to type in the name of the person being called. Then the user clicks on the call button. The iPhone then makes a local cell phone call over the AT&T network to the RF.com media gateway. The gateway then goes out over the Internet and connects to the Skype service, which then connects the call to the person being called. RF.com reserves the data channel of the iPhone to find out pertinent facts such as which friends are online.

By contrast, other mobile VoIP services such as Fring bypass the cellular network and use the data channel to make an Internet call. But the quality of these voice calls is often poor, given spotty access to Wi-Fi networks needed to complete the connection.

Like Mig33 or iSkoot, RF.com works in tandem with — and not in competition to — mobile carriers such as AT&T since it generates voice calls on the carrier’s network. iSkoot, however, is Skype only, while Mig33 is a VoIP service provider.

Competitors include Hipsip, which we wrote about in April. Hipsip, which works only with Skype, can make Skype calls but for now requires that a user’s own computer running the Hipsip software be up and running in order for the calls to go through. Other rivals include Mobivox and Talkety.

The RF Dialer is available for the iPhone in beta mode and founder Marcelo Rodriguez (pictured below, right) says it works entirely within Apple’s permitted use guidelines. It is easily transportable to other web-based phones including those from Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Google’s upcoming Android mobile platform. PhoneGnome has already licensed the RF.com technology and a second major VOIP partner will be announced soon.

Ringfree Mobility is still exploring different business models, such as offering premium services or partnering with other VOIP service providers such as PhoneGnome.

Rodriguez was formerly CEO of VoIP news site Voxilla.com and managing editor of Miami Herald New Media. His cofounder is Eric Chamberlain (left), former chief technology officer at Voxilla. They formally incorporated the company in March, 2008. The company has four employees and has been self-funded to date.

[Disclosures: Rodriguez was an editor at the San Jose Mercury News years ago and occasionally edited stories I wrote when I worked there. He is married to Katherine Fong, a San Jose Mercury News deputy managing editor who is in charge of online journalism at the newspaper.]

Check out MobileBeat2008, VentureBeat’s conference on July 24.

Intel isn’t going to be alone as it tries to skewer Samsung and other chip makers in portable Internet devices. Nvidia is out to claim that market as well.

Today, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia is announcing its Tegra brand of chips for beefy Internet handhelds that can do serious graphics. This brand will include two different kinds of chips. The previously announced Nvidia APX 2500 is aimed at smartphones.

We noted that Samsung is stepping up the chip battle in portable electronics, squaring off against Intel, Nvidia, and Texas Instruments. Now Nvidia is showing its cards. The Nvidia APX 2500 has the ability to connect via an HDMI cable to a big screen and play a full 720p high-definition video for 10 hours on the equivalent of an iPhone battery. The APX 2500 could also be used in navigation devices and portable media players.

Other new chips being announced today under the Tegra brand are the Tegra 600 for phones and Tegra 650 chips for mobile Internet devices (MIDs). These are wireless broadband-enabled portable devices with screens ranging from four inches to 12 inches. All of the products are descended from Nvidia’s $357 million PortalPlayer acquisition in 2006.

“Tegra is a tiny computer on a chip designed to power these new devices,” said Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia’s mobile chip business.

The company’s Tegra chips are shipping now and are much smaller than Intel’s current Diamondville solution, which uses the new Atom low-power microprocessors. The Tegra chips are about 10 times smaller than Atom and yet can run movies for 26 hours, compared to four hours for Atom. It consumes a single watt of power, compared to 10 watts for a Diamondville board.

A half-dozen or so devices are expected to debut with the Tegra chips by the end of the year. The company is making the announcement at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. Besides Intel, Nvidia will likely have to square off against Samsung, which we wrote about a few days ago, and Texas Instruments.

Samsung Electronics has quietly built a $4 billion business providing chips that serve as the brains of consumer electronics gadgets. Among its big wins are the iPods, iPhones, and portable navigation devices such as the Dash Express.

But it’s starting to talk more now. The company says its System LSI division within Samsung Semiconductor is targeting the fast-growing digital photo frame and mobile Internet device markets as well. Those markets are expected to hit tens of millions in the coming years, according to market analysts such as International Data Corp. and TSR.

But this sudden chattiness isn’t a surprise. The competition is heating up in this space. Intel has launched the Atom microprocessor to serve as the brains of MIDs, which are broadband-connected handhelds with sizable screens and general-purpose computing power. Nvidia has also launched a chip, the APX 2500, aimed at delivering superb graphics on a MID or smart phone.

Both Intel and Nvidia want to take the power of their PC chips and bring them down into the mobile space, while Samsung is defending its turf in handhelds and phones with power-efficient processors based on the ARM architecture. It’s a classic collision, where one side is moving from the high end to the low and the other moving up from the low end. Another reason for Samsung to worry is that Apple recently bought PA Semi, a microprocessor maker. It isn’t clear what Apple could do with it. But conceivably it might make its own ARM-based chips and cut Samsung out of the picture. Interestingly, Nvidia bought PortalPlayer just as it was losing the iPod business to Samsung. Now PortalPlayer’s assets are enabling Nvidia to get into the MID/smart phone markets.

South Korea-based Samsung is better known in chips as a memory supplier. Samsung is a little bit at a disadvantage since Apple doesn’t let its suppliers talk about their business with Apple. The company’s application processors have gone through several generations of the ARM architecture since 2002. A next-generation chip based on the ARM Cortex A8 core isn’t that far away, said Richard Yeh, director of marketing for the System LSI division of Samsung. The Cortex cores can run at speeds greater than 667 megahertz, not bad for an extremely low-power chip.

The application processors are families of chips that stuff everything you need into one chip: multimedia, mobile TV, 3-D graphics, communications, imaging, and basic interface controls. Samsung says it has a 60 percent share of the market for application processors in portable navigation devices. Those devices are moving on to 3-D maps and landmarks, requiring a leap in processing power.

In digital photo frames, Samsung has had a later start. But those devices too are being infused with wireless Internet connectivity and video capabilities. As such, they require beefier processors. Intel has been loudly trumpeting the MID market all year, though one of the requirements is ubiquitous wireless broadband. That’s not really happening until new technologies such as WiMax are adopted.

Samsung’s smartphone customers include Hewlett-Packard and Palm. Dash Navigation’s Dash Express car navigation device has a novel two-way communication system that allows Dash to give drivers more accurate real-time traffic data.

It will be interesting to see how the chip competition unfolds. Texas Instruments is also in the race. But here’s a clue from Yeh. He says that companies that offer a one-size-fits-all chip (i.e. Intel) aren’t likely to succeed in markets where customization is king. Moreover, Intel won’t have a cell-phone Atom chip until next year. That gives Samsung plenty of breathing room for now.