Fujitsu and Taiwan’s Institute for Information Industry plan to invest “billions of yen” in a joint WiMAX chip R&D facility in Taiwan, according to the Taiwan Economic News and Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
The deal, the first of its kind between the two firms, could be announced in the next week. The reports suggest that the chips, capable of 10M bytes/sec (fast enough for high-quality streaming pictures online) will be developed at the Taiwan R&D site and shipped to Fujitsu in Japan for volume production, for eventual use in mobile phones and other handset equipment.
The Taiwan report noted that the island is “an advantageous place” for WiMAX technology work since it’s a manufacturing base for many OEMs, including motherboards where it fills 90% of global demand.