Toshiba and Siemens to tie-up on development of mobile phones

The leading Japanese and German electronics makers will combine Toshiba's W-CDMA and Siemens' GSM technologies to devise cutting edge handsets capable of sending and receiving video.

The phones will be made available in the first quarter of 2002 and will be sold separately by the two companies under their own brands.

The two companies are targeting Asia and Europe as primary markets for 3G mobiles. Demand for W-SVMA GSM dual-standard mobile phones is expected to reach 130 million units by 2005, according to Toshiba.

GSM stands for Global System for Mobile. Currently, GSM system is widely used in the world including in Europe. W-CDMA, which stands for Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, is under development now and it will be used in Japan and other Asian countries as well as in Europe starting 2001.

Toshiba has been focusing on Japan and North America for its cellular-phone business, but is hoping to stretch into Europe and the rest of Asia through the collaboration, which will give it access to Siemens' GSM know-how, analysts said.

Siemens, in turn, will benefit from Toshiba's technological expertise in semiconductors for compressing video data and in liquid crystal displays, the analysts said.

(dpa)