3G Patents Operations Underway

Datang, Philips and Samsung Form 3G TD-SCDMA Joint Venture

BEIJING (Dow Jones)-- Royal Philips Electronics and Samsung Electronics Co. (Q.SSE) of South Korea said they had formed a joint venture with a Beijing-based company to support China's homegrown third-generation, or 3G, mobile technology.

That standard, known as TD-SCDMA, was developed by the Chinese partner in the new venture, state-owned Datang Mobile Communications Co., but it so far hasn't received the same amount of international backing as the two other standards for high-speed wireless networks, W-CDMA and cdma2000.

Nonetheless, Datang has strong support from China's government and is preparing to launch commercial products based on TD-SCDMA next year. China's telecom operators are also expected to begin trials of 3G in 2004 but haven't yet made a final commitment to a particular technology.

Though most analysts don't expect TD-SCDMA to become much more than a niche product even in China, the country's mobile market is still the largest in the world, with over 200 million users. That is big enough for many foreign companies to invest a little money in supporting TD-SCDMA just in case the standard does take off.

The venture launched Monday, Beijing T3G Technology Co., builds on an existing research laboratory Philips had set up jointly with Datang, and will create designs and chipsets for mobile phones based on TD-SCDMA, the companies said in a statement.

Samsung said it would use the designs produced by the joint venture to roll out in 2004 a line of mobile phones supporting both TD-SCDMA and GSM, the mobile phone technology now in the widest use in China. The designs will also be available for license to other manufacturers.

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