austriamicrosystems AG is working on the separation of audio from baseband in mobile phones. The idea is to have a separate SoC which would address power management and audio requirements of a mobile phone to make it at par with MP3 player.
The current technology of using baseband for audio requirements won't work efficiently in the long run as there will always be the power consumption issue and quality will also be poor.
austriamicrosystems is having a dedicated SoC for media players and now are trying it with complex mobile accessories like the headset. The next step is to integrate it in the actual handset so that it works as an efficient media player within the mobile phone. Initially such SoCs would be in higher end mobiles.