Fujitsu, NEC and DoCoMo create joint mobile chipset venture

Shawn Knight

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Qualcomm could soon be facing some serious competition in the mobile communications chipset market as Fujitsu Limited, NTT DoCoMo, NEC, and Fujitsu Semiconductor have agreed to form a joint venture to create and sell semiconductor products with built-in modem capabilities. The new company, Access Network Technology Limited, is scheduled to begin operating this month after receiving capital from DoCoMo, NEC and Fujitsu Semiconductor.

The companies have all collaborated in the past but the new business simply makes it official. The joint venture will employ approximately 85 workers with a capital of 100 million yen. Access Network Technology Limited will be led by President Minoru Sakata and is expected to give all parties a huge competitive advantage in the smartphone market as demand for mobile phones and other devices like tablets will continue to rise in the coming years.

Fujitsu Limited will maintain the majority ownership of the venture at 52.8 percent while DoCoMo will control 19.9 percent, NEC will own 17.8 percent and Fujitsu Semiconductor will claim 9.5 percent. SlashGear expects the company’s products to initially target the Japanese home market before finding a place in laptops from Fujitsu and NEC.

Despite the fact that operations will start this month, Access isn’t expected to have products ready for the market anytime soon. Fujitsu did say that they plan to secure around 7 percent of the global market share for smartphone chips by 2014, a market that is largely dominated by Qualcomm.

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