Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Infineon (NYSE: IFX) are going to be working together to create HSPA and LTE chips. Nokia will be handling the modem side, while Infineon will be dealing with the hard part, the RF implementation. Since Nokia got rid of their ASIC designers back in August 2007, the Finnish company been partnering with everyone in the industry in an attempt to save costs and decrease time to market for new products, so this isn’t anything new. The exciting bit out of all this is that Nokia and Infineon are going to work together on the LTE Advanced standard. Commercial LTE networks have yet to be turned on, but it doesn’t mean the industry isn’t planning ahead. LTE Advanced should deliver around 1 gigabit/second speeds.
Complete Press Release below.
[Via: Phone Scoop, Reuters]
Infineon and Nokia Announce Collaboration to Develop Leading LTE Solutions
Neubiberg, Germany – November 25, 2009 – Infineon Technologies, one of the leading semiconductor companies for mobile phone solutions, and Nokia, the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones and services, today announced a cooperation to develop advanced radio frequency (RF) transceiver solutions. The agreement covers a non-exclusive collaboration to ensure the compatibility and interworking of Nokia’s advanced licensable baseband modem technologies and Infineon’s leading RF solutions.
Nokia and Infineon will work together to ensure that current and future generations of Nokia’s leading licensable modem designs work seamlessly with Infineon’s leading RF transceiver solutions, giving the industry access to complete modem solutions for HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) through LTE (Long Term Evolution) and beyond.
“We are grateful to expand our successful collaboration with Nokia beyond our current platform and RF activities,” stated Prof. Hermann Eul, Member of the Infineon Management Board. “Pairing Nokia’s advanced modem technology and Infineon’s best in class RF transceiver solutions, will give the industry access to very competitive chipset solutions.”
The collaboration involves teams from both companies working on the architectural and system challenges to ensure seamless interoperability and compatibility. The fruits of this cooperation will be a verified technology reference platform.
“Taking advantage of each company’s expertise as leaders in their respective fields, this cooperation will help to deliver standard-based, industry leading solutions for mobile internet devices,” said Pekka Sarlund, Vice President, Wireless Modem, Nokia.
Facilitated by this cooperation, both companies will jointly drive the interface standardization for LTE-Advanced enabling data rates of up to 1Gbit/s. Providing a validated system with an open interface will enable a fast roll out of new products and increase competition in the market for advanced modem chipsets.