Mark Frauenfelder writes:

A Japanese company has announced a new chip that looks to solve the two biggest obstacles keeping Wi-Fi out of mobile handsets... First, the chipset is relatively large, and second, Wi-Fi is a real battery hog.

Both of these problems appear to have been eliminated in one fell swoop with the announcement of a tiny chip that draws just one milliwatt of power (compared to 50 milliwatts for a typical Wi-Fi circuit.)

The company that makes the chip, Alps Electric of Japan, is targeting mobile phones first, but also plans to make the chip for PDAs and cameras.

There isn't any more information on how they manage the low power consumption, but it certainly is time that someone does this. I wonder what the wireless operators are going to say about handset manufacturers incorporating this chip set into their devices, as it will certainly cut into carrier's revenue (data and voice).