14 DAY TRIAL // Six Japanese companies are planning the joint development of a basic platform, for manufacturing next-generation mobile phones, that is meant to cut development time and costs.
One of the six, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's biggest wireless carrier as well as the other five companies hope to complete the platform during the July-September quarter of 2008.
The joint development of the basic platform for 3G mobile phones will cut development time and costs and help companies to invest more time and resources on expanding their product lineup and developing distinctive features.
So basically, not only will they be able to develop mobile phones faster and probably release them at a lower price, but this would leave the manufacturers with a lot of time for focusing on how to produce smarter, more advanced handsets.
Aside from NTT DoCoMo, the consortium includes semiconductor maker Renesas Technology Corp., Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric and Sharp.
Renesas will be the one to provide the platform to the worldwide WCDMA market in addition to Japan and the platform will also support 2G mobile phones.
In Japan, mobile phones are used for practically anything, from listening to music to sending e-mails, surfing the net or paying for products. Also, the number of telephone subscriptions in the country surpassed 100 million for the first time in January.
The total number of subscriptions represents about 78 percent of Japan's population, although there is the possibility of a person owning more than one mobile phone contract.