On December 4, 2007, Sharp announced that it has developed tuner modules compliant with China's homegrown DTMB (Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcasting) standard, which was also known as GB20600-2006 and officially announced in August 2006.

Sharp's DTMB tuner modules are expected to begin sample shipments in January 2008 with a sample price of 30,000 Yen (US$ 269.7; US$1 = 11.2 Yen). Mass production is slated to begin by the end of March 2008, Nikkei Electronics reported.

Bypassing the process of HDTV (High Definition Television) signal conversion, Sharp's new module consolidates the tuner IC with an OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) decoder IC. With a dimension of 10.7x10.7x1.4mm, the module is envisaged as an HDTV tuner designed for mobile terminals. Applications include notebook PCs, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), GPS (Global Positioning System), automotive navigation systems, USB (Universal Serial Bus) tuners, and Smartphones.