Wednesday, December 19, 2007

china unicom & VIA technologies CDMA chip agreement

VIA Technologies
V.K.Arora 09811153833

PRESS RELEASE

CHINA UNICOM SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH VIA TECHNOLOGIES FOR CDMA HANDSET DEVELOPMENT

New Delhi December 19. China Unicom signed a collaboration agreement with Taiwan's chip maker VIA Technologies Inc. yesterday in Beijing regarding the development of CDMA handsets, China Unicom announced today.

China Unicom the world’s largest CDMA operator said that the two companies will "leverage each other's technologies and resources", but did not reveal any more details about the partnership.

Jin Lei, public relations manager of handset manufacturer Dopod China, told Interfax that Dopod has used chips from VIA Telecom, a subsidiary of VIA Technologies, in two CDMA handsets that Dopod and China Unicom released yesterday.

"Dopod yesterday released two low-cost CDMA handsets under the new brand name 'Vivie'. Previously, Dopod provided high-end smartphones primarily to China Mobile," Jin said.

The deal between China Unicom and VIA Technologies breaks Qualcomm's monopoly in supplying CDMA chips to China Unicom and promises to lower chip costs. Qualcomm is a major CDMA chipset supplier that owns patents for CDMA-related technologies.

"We can't address specific decisions made by other companies, but we are pleased any time CDMA technology is used in mobile communication and mobile devices, as this further validates the success of CDMA," Qualcomm told Interfax.

VIA Telecom was created in April 2002 when VIA Technologies bought the CDMA wireless division of LSI Logic. In June 2003, LSI Logic's CDMA license agreement with Qualcomm was transferred to VIA Telecom.

VIA Telecom is based in San Diego, California, and is focused on developing baseband processors for the CDMA2000 standard.
China Unicom is the smaller of two mobile operators in China. It operates both CDMA and GSM mobile services. China Unicom is the world's largest CDMA operator with approximately 40.5 million CDMA subscribers.

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