NTT DoCoMo, which is one of the biggest carriers in Japan, has decided to enter into a joint venture with a number of Japanese companies for developing semiconductors for smartphones. The joint venture will include NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Fujitsu, NEC and Fujitsu Semiconductors.
The main aim of this partnership would be to develop feature-rich, small-size, low power consuming semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality. Also it is aimed to lessen the dominance and dependence for these semiconductors which are manufactured by Qualcomm.
NTT DoCoMo is expected to take major stake in the joint venture and invest around $5.8 million. The deal is expected to be finalised by the end of March 2012.
This deal will not just be concentrated in Japan but is aimed to be at global level and will concentrate more on the LTE and LTE-Advanced chips. Recently Qualcomm had announced that it will be integrating LTE in its 22nm Snapdragon S4 chips. It would be nice to see how this joint venture competes with Qualcomm.