After months of declining revenue and increasing debt, Calgary's QSound Labs, which makes audio and voice software for mobile devices, has hired an investment banking firm to explore "a full range of strategic options." That means everything from forming an alliance with another company to being sold. In its last quarterly report the company said royalty and recurring licence fee revenue for the three months ending Sept. 30 plunged 44 per cent to $346,868 from $618,131 for the same period in 2007. For the nine months ending Sept. 30 those fees dropped 22 per cent from the same period the year before. At the end of September the company's deficit had swollen to $51.1 million.
QSound's products can be found in LG, Mitac, Panasonic, Pantech and Samsung mobile phones. For example China's ZTE's U728 SCDMA TV cell phone uses its mSynth MIDI synthesizer for polyphonic ringtones, game music and interactive sound events, while LG's KF600 handset uses QSound's microQ digital audio engine for ring tones and enhanced music playback.