TOKYO Japan's Toshiba Corp. and Siemens AG of Germany said Tuesday they were joining forces in an unprecedented alliance to develop and produce third-generation (3G) mobile telephones.
The first attempt by Japanese and European manufacturers to jointly develop 3G handsets aims to make compatible cellular phones available early in 2002, Toshiba and Siemens said in a joint statement, according to an AFP dispatch.
"Both companies will design their own branded 3G devices, which will be marketed and sold independently," they said.
"The alliance will pave the way for the development of cutting-edge 3G devices for this fast-growth, high-volume market via the integration of the latest advances in Toshiba's W-CDMA and Siemens' GSM technologies." Japan, Europe and Asia will employ the same technical standards for 3G communications based on wide-band code division multiple access (W-CDMA). North America looks set to embrace the rival CDMA2000.
Europe currently uses the global system for mobile communications (GSM) format for digital cellular phones.
W-CDMA will make its global debut in Japan next May, pioneered by NTT Docomo INC., and is scheduled to enter Europe in 2002, promising much higher speeds and data volumes than currently on offer.
Telecoms carriers paying fortunes for 3G licenses in Europe are banking that the new services will transform mobile communications, for example by putting the Internet in users' pockets.
The alliance with the German engineering giant was therefore a breakthrough, Kaoru Kubo, Toshiba executive vice president for digital media networks, said in the statement.
"By allowing us to integrate the latest advances in W-CDMA and GSM into our products, the global alliance will put us in a position to respond more quickly and effectively to the needs of the 3G mobile phone market," he said.
Toshiba and Siemens said they would also work on making terminals for upcoming 3G standards and MPEG-4 devices, which will support advanced services such as distributing film clips on mobile phones.