Tokyo, February 12:

Japanese semiconductor producer Renesas Technology, NTT DoCoMo and three other firms are to jointly develop system chips for use in the next generation of mobile phones.

The firms including Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric and Sharp aim to start commercial production by 2007, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported. The chips, which will perform core functions such as speedy data transmission and image processing, will primarily be based on Japanese standards for next-generation handsets. These will also be compatible with formats now widely used in Europe and other Asian countries. The new system chip will work with a fourth-generation mobile phone format that can send data about 10 times faster than the W-CDMA standard used in 3G service.