Export achievement recognised by Queen's Award

In recognition of outstanding export achievement, Oxford Semiconductor has received the Queen's Award for Enterprise for International Trade 2004. Exporting to twenty countries across Asia, Europe and North America, the company recorded overseas earnings for the last three years of more than £23 million.

The Queen's Awards for Enterprise are the UK's most prestigious awards for business performance. They recognise and reward outstanding achievement by UK companies. The Awards are made each year by the Queen, on the advice of the Prime Minister, who is assisted by an Advisory Committee that includes representatives of Government, industry and commerce and Trade Unions.

Founded in Abingdon, in 1992, Oxford Semiconductor has established a worldwide reputation as an innovator of connectivity chips and embedded software used in a wide range of consumer electronic products. Most notably, the company's ultra fast FireWire / IDE bridge chips are regarded as market leaders in the external disk drive sector.

Oxford Semiconductor's blue chip customer base features many of the world's biggest IT brands, including LaCie, Maxtor and Seagate. Oxford today employs 80 people across offices in the UK, Singapore, Taiwan and the USA, and operates a global network of distributors and sales agents.

Commenting on the award, Oxford Semiconductor's CEO James Foster said, "The Queen's Award is a direct reflection of our focus on developing chips that remove the complexity from consumer electronic products. Our export success has been achieved by forging close relations with overseas customers and providing them with robust software and working silicon that helps take products to market in the shortest possible time."

"The last two years have seen incredible advances in digital consumer electronic technology with the introduction of digital stills cameras, camcorders and MP3 players, and the use of the Web for the distribution of audio and video data has become commonplace. This technology is though in its very infancy and Oxford Semiconductor is well placed to support the development of the consumer electronic products of the future."