December 27, 2011 — NTT DOCOMO, INC. reached a basic agreement with Fujitsu Ltd., Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd., NEC Corporation, Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to establish a fabless joint venture company by the end of March 2012 to develop and sell semiconductor products for mobile devices.
The six investing companies share strong backgrounds in cellular communication technology and application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) design and foundry manufacturing. The fabless JV will develop feature-rich, small-size, low-power-consumption semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality. It will be focused on LTE and LTE-Advanced mobile communication standards products, sold globally.
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DOCOMO plans to invest 450 million Japanese yen (USD5.8 million), to establish a wholly owned subsidiary, called Communication Platform Planning Co. Ltd. and headed by CEO Mitsunobu Komori, concurrently an executive vice president and CTO of DOCOMO, by the middle of January. All parties are now working on other details of the JV, via consultation.
NTT DOCOMO is a mobile operator that is in transition into an Integrated Service Company placing mobility at the core. NTT DOCOMO is listed on the Tokyo (9437), London (NDCM) and New York (DCM) stock exchanges. Please visit www.nttdocomo.com for more information.