DoCoMo, 5 companies to set up communication platform joint venture

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NTT DoCoMo Inc has reached a basic agreement with five companies — Fujitsu Ltd, Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd, NEC Corp, Panasonic Mobile Communications Co and Samsung Electronics Co — to establish a fabless joint venture company by the end of March 2012 to develop and sell semiconductor products for mobile devices.

The joint venture company, leveraging the six investing companies’ strong backgrounds in cellular communication technology and vast experience in application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) design and foundry manufacturing, will develop feature-rich, small-size, low-power-consumption semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality.

The joint venture company will focus on developing products for LTE and LTE-Advanced mobile communication standards. The products will be sold in markets globally.

DoCoMo said it plans to invest 450 million yen to establish a wholly owned subsidiary, called Communication Platform Planning Co Ltd by the middle of January.