In According to a new report in the Nikkei business daily, NTT DoCoMo Inc and other Japanese firms will partner South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co to develop key chips for next-generation smartphones. The main motivation behind the new collaboration is to reduce the reliance on Qualcomm Inc.
Fujitsu Ltd, NEC Corp and Panasonic Corp unit Panasonic Mobile Communications Co, are said to be in talks with DoCoMo and Samsung to finalise the joint venture by next year for developing chips that control wireless communications and signals, the paper said.
Qualcomm has about 80 percent of the market for such semiconductors, known as baseband chips. The Nikkei business daily says that DoCoMo is most likely to take a majority stake in the joint venture, to be capitalized at about 30 billion yen ($389.6 million) and headquartered in Japan.
The chips produced from the joint venture will be used in the smartphones created by all the partners and it will also be sold to other handset manufacturers. Samsung expects the joint venture to help it in the development of next-generation telecommunication while DoCoMo hopes to lower chip procurement costs by taking part in development.
Many smartphone vendors have been looking for alternatives to Qualcomm, but no one expects the new venture to erode Qualcomms market share overnight.
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