Competition of 3G Chip Development of Mobile Phone

‘Occupy the 3G mobile phone chip market.’

To occupy the 3G mobile-phone market, the mobile chip manufacturers have competed in earnest. It is forecasted that the chip demand will largely increase as the mobile companies of US and China have promoted a commercialization of IMT-2000, the 3G mobile phone.

According to the communication industry on October 4, the service industry of Europe started the 2.5G service (GPRS) in succession, and so the competition of 3G Chip development has been expanded to asynchronous field.

As the company which owns CDMA source technology, US QUALCOMM Incorporated has shown a remarkable activity in 3G mobile phone chip market as the area of synchronous IMT-2000 commercialization has been extended to China and US focused on Korea. QUALCOMM Incorporated has launched MSM5500, 2.4Mbps EV-DO chip of the maximum transmission speed, and then launched MSM6200, asynchronous 3G chip for asynchronous IMT-2000 companies of Korea and Japan.

The development competition of asynchronous mobile phone chip companies including Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and NEC has been focused on the field of a dual mode chip which can use 3G and 2G service simultaneously. It is because the asynchronous IMT-2000 has to use with the existing 2G service together until the network is established all over the country.

Hitachi in Japan announced that it has developed ‘SH7300, which can make it possible to communicate on video and transmit high-speed and would start to sell in November. The product is said to provide high-resolution image call by increasing the data transmission speed.

Nokia has launched the dual mode chip and terminal for 2G and 3G which can use for GPRS and asynchronous IMT-2000. The domestic venture company, Eonex (www.eonex.com) developed the dual mode modem chip for the mobile phone terminal which can use the asynchronous and synchronous IMT-2000 Service at the same time for the first time in the world. It joined in the 3G Chip development competition.

Jeong Seong-hwan, the president of Eonex forecasted, “Owing to a popularization of the mobile phone, the mobile phone chip market has become the big market over PC CPU or memory semiconductor market. There will be the keen competition of the dual mode 3 G chip from the starting point of the end of the year.

Tae-Han Kim freewill@donga.com