Nokia taps up ST-Ericsson for TD-SCDMA chips

Handset behemoth Nokia extended its relationship with chip shop ST-Ericsson on Friday, announcing a long term partnership over China’s homebrew TD-SCDMA platform.

The Finnish firm will use ST-Ericsson’s components in its Symbian-based devices for the Chinese 3G market.

ST-Ericsson’s Chinese subsidiary, T3G, has been working on TD-SCDMA for more than six years, while Nokia launched the 6788, its first Symbian based TD-SCDMA phone, in October.

The Symbian Foundation recently revealed to telecoms.com that it had a visit from a big delegation of top brass from China Mobile in September who signed an MOU on collaboration with the platform developer.

“The potential numbers in China are absolutely enormous and this gives China Mobile a degree of influence over what happens in their market, and they would like an open independent platform that is royalty free, open source and not controlled by anyone. And that’s what we are in the process of trying to create,” said John Forsyth, leadership team at the Symbian Foundation.