Alcatel and STMicroelectronics sign cooperation agreement for development and supply of future GSM/GPRS chipsets - Business - Brief Article

Mobile Internet, The, March, 2002

STMicroelectronics and Alcatel announced a new cooperation agreement for the development of future GSM/GPRS chipsets for mobile phones and other wireless connectivity applications.

Under the terms of the agreement, Alcatel is transferring to ST its team of mobile phone integrated circuit designers. ST will get access to the know-how and intellectual property related to GSM/GPRS developed by this group. The resulting chipsets will be available for the open market. This also includes a multi-year supply agreement associated with 2.5G chipsets.

This cooperation between ST and Alcatel in the development of GSM/GPRS chipsets will result in cost-optimized solutions for the basic "engine" of the mobile phone, allowing Alcatel to concentrate more on the elements which differentiate mobile phones -- software, product integration, user interface, design and styling. This cost optimization and the availability for the open market favor the use of GSM/GPRS chipsets for embedded wireless communications in other applications, such as PDAs, automotive systems and laptop computers.

ST and Alcatel have been partners for many years, jointly developing a large variety of integrated circuits for communications applications. This partnership has proved very effective in other communication systems, where the combination of system know-how from Alcatel and system-on-chip expertise from ST has resulted in a range of competitive chipset solutions.

New digital baseband chips to be developed by the Alcatel/ST design team will be based on ST's advanced ST 100 DSP core, chosen by Alcatel in 2000 as their preferred core for communications applications. The additional power of the ST 100 will allow enhancements to chipset performance and the implementation of new features.