With investments towering up for 3D content development and next generation high-performance image-processing chip, mobile multimedia chip augmented reality player Movidius foresees a huge potential in this market. This improvised new technology experience on mobile phones is all set to revolutionize the mobile market by broadening the horizons of the entertainment industry.

The company has raised $16 Million in Series D Funding to accelerate next-generation mobile products, R&D spending and to build a team in Silicon Valley, where its new U.S. headquarters are located.

The $16 million Series D funding is led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital, DFJ Esprit and Atlantic Bridge, along with existing Movidius investors Capital E, AIB Seed Capital Fund and private investors.

Movidius develops advanced technology for mobile phone manufacturers, which enable multimedia compression, processing and editing video, including 3D video and other applications in audio or mobile games. Movidius product consists of a coprocessor with low power consumption (to save battery power on electronic devices) running in a number of multimedia applications. The Myriad 3-D platform is being used for auto stereoscopic 3-D multimedia capabilities including real-time 2-D to 3-D conversion of video, high-definition 3-D video capture and HD 3-D display.

Movidius will use the funding in the development of multi-core, ultralow power and high-performance computational image-processor chips design. The funding will also help the company to develop new applications including augmented reality simulation, advanced location-based services, post-capture refocusing, gaze or gesture-based user interfaces, high quality zoom, and modeling and scanning for 3D printing.

“This new investment allows us to bring our latest computational imaging processor to market early next year, and continue to innovate ground-breaking mobile applications with software partners,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, Movidius CEO. “Meeting the constant increases in processing power needed to deliver a quality user experience at the right power envelope for advanced mobile applications has required an entirely fresh approach to architecture and not just an incremental enhancement to existing technologies.”

In addition to the fund rising, the company appointed Remi El-Ouazzane as its new CEO and Dan Dobberpuhl as Chairman of the Board. Remi was instrumental in designing first OMAP application processor for the Android platform in Texas Instruments, where he served as Vice President and worldwide General Manager of the Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP) Business Unit. Dan has extensive experience on processors such as Itanium, Opteron and UltraSPARC.

“This new Movidius computational image-processing architecture opens up completely new possibilities on mobile devices that were once the realm of science fiction,” said Dobberpuhl. “In the near future, high-performance applications like visual search and 3D-enabled e-commerce using smartphones and tablets with minimal battery drain are within our grasp.”

Movidius has partnership with poLight AS (Horten, Norway) on autofocus camera assemblies and with Toshiba Electronics Europe on designing of 3-D image capture system. The company had raised $9 million in a Series C round of finance back in November 2011.