Joint Venture to Develop 3G Handsets

Fujitsu and Mitsubishi Electric have announced that they are exploring a collaboration to jointly develop new FOMA mobile handsets running the Symbian OS operating system for Japan's DoCoMo. In recent years, handset manufacturers have been steadily moving toward the implementation of two main OS standards as the advanced mobile operating system for FOMA handsets: Symbian OS, which has a strong track record overseas as an operating system for mobile phones, and Linux, which is well-known as an open standard operating system. Manufacturers that are licensees of the Symbian OS (as well as other OS's) account for 85% of total worldwide mobile handset sales.

To accelerate their development efforts for increasingly sophisticated FOMA handsets and quickly bring to market highly differentiated products, Fujitsu and Mitsubishi Electric are exploring the possibility of collaborating on FOMA handset development.

The companies are currently working out the details regarding the potential timing and scope of this collaboration."

Posted to the site on 26th March 2004