Infineon Technologies has signed a wireless internet technology collaboration deal with Nokia.
The deal will lead to supply contracts with Nokia for mobile phone chipsets supporting GSM enhancement technology known as EDGE.
EDGE, which is now being adopted by operators as the stepping stone to next generation HSPA technology, lifts mobile phone download rates to between 500kbit/s and 1Mbit/s.
In what is being seen as an important deal in the strategically important handset market, Infineon will supply its XMM 2130 EDGE platform to Nokia, which will support internet access in a new range of mobile phones.
“We are grateful to expand our successful collaboration with Nokia beyond our two ULC products, the XMM 1010 and the XMM 1100, now to our EDGE products,” said Peter Bauer, CEO of Infineon Technologies.
Infineon offers a full range of handset silicon, an EDGE baseband modem, audio player, stereo RDS FM radio receiver, stereo headset, USB interface as well as interfaces for memory cards.
The XMM 2130 is manufactured in a 65nm process.
EDGE technology, which is an enhancement to GSM and GPRS networks, was first deployed in 2004 and is now established as a workhorse technology in many networks as operators move to 3G-like services such as internet access.