DoCoMo gives up on LTE-chip JV

John C. Tanner
03 Apr 2012
00:00

NTT DoCoMo has scrapped plans to create a joint venture with regional chipset makers to develop and sell semiconductor products for LTE devices after its partners failed to agree on a plan to move forward.

DoCoMo entered an agreement in December last year with Fujitsu, Fujitsu Semiconductor, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics to establish a fabless JV that would “develop feature-rich, small-size, low-power-consumption semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality” with a specific focus on developing products for LTE and LTE-Advanced devices.

The JV – which had been slated to formally kick off at the end of March – also set its sights on the global market, with one objective being to help Japanese and Korean chipset players compete against heavy LTE hitters like Qualcomm to power the next generation of mobile devices.

However, DoCoMo said in a statement Monday that the JV agreement had been terminated “because a consensus on the details of the envisioned company could not be reached by the target deadline.”

Consequently, DoCoMo said that Communication Platform Planning Co Ltd – the wholly owned subsidiary the cellco had established to prepare the formation of the JV, with a planned investment of 450 million yen ($5.8 million) – will be liquidated in June.

DoCoMo offered no further details on the JV’s closure.

The collapse of the JV comes a month after DoCoMo, NEC, Panasonic and Fujitsu (but not Samsung) announced they had jointly developed software and hardware intellectual property for a large-scale integration (LSI) chip for GSM, W-CDMA, HSPA+ and LTE that would enable energy-efficient modems that could reduce power consumption in LTE devices by 20% during both communication and stand-by.

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