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Motorola Enters Cell-Phone Chip Race in China
In a move to enter the cellular-phone chip race in China, Motorola Inc announces Monday, December 19, a major alliance with a pair of Chinese companies--Eastern Communications Co. Ltd (Eastcom) and the China Integrated Circuit Design Center (CIDC).
Under the terms, Motorola will license its chip technology to Eastcom and CIDC for use in developing handsets in the China market. The three companies will co-develop handsets based on the global system for mobile communications (GSM) digital-cellular standard.
Motorola will license its baseband chip technology to Eastcom, a supplier of wireless handsets in China. The US company will also license its language display, ringer, and protocol stack software to Eastcom.
According to the contract, the alliance will design and produce its first 2.5G GSM handset within the next 18 months. The handset is expected to feature high-speed Internet access functionality.
Motorola is the latest US chip maker to announce a major alliance in China. Recently, Texas Instruments Inc and Qualcomm Inc have separately announced alliances with various OEMs in China, in an effort to get a jump on the world's fastest growing cellular phone market.
According to the Ministry of Information Industry, the cell phone market in China is expected to grow from 68 million subscribers in 2000 to nearly 250 million by 2004.
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