Thursday, 6 December 2007

Fujitsu & Taiwan’s Institute for Information Industry Establish JV for WiMAX App Platforms

Fujitsu Limited and the Institute for Information Industry (III) of Taiwan, a non-governmental organization jointly sponsored by the Taiwan government and prominent private enterprises, Tuesday announced their agreement to enter into a memorandum of understanding (MOU), to establish a new company in Taiwan that will develop application platforms and provide engineering support based on WiMAX technology from Fujitsu and III.

The joint venture, which has been tentatively named as Taiwan Solution AE Center, has been scheduled to be established in March 2008 and is anticipated to significantly contribute to the development of the WiMAX industry in Taiwan.

Leveraging Fujitsu’s WiMAX SoC solutions and III’s software technologies, the new collaboration is set to develop WiMAX application platforms and provide them to ODM vendors in Taiwan. With fully localized engineering support provided by the new company, such platforms will enable ODM vendors to rapidly achieve mass production of attractive and competitive WiMAX equipment. Since numerous global brand equipment vendors are using Taiwanese ODM vendors as manufacturing partners, it is expected that application platforms and localized engineering support provided by the new company will spur the rapid growth of the global WiMAX industry.

Initial target applications will include mobile WiMAX handsets, and femto/pico base stations. Such application platforms will be delivered to ODM vendors in Taiwan to shorten the time-to-market and help them to bring up their WiMAX products to the worldwide customers quickly.

Fujitsu is a founding board member of the WiMAX Forum, an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products, with a goal to accelerate the introduction of such products into the marketplace. Fujitsu already ships mobile WiMAX SoC solutions targeting WiMAX Forum Wave 2 certification compliance, to various global customers.

The Taiwan government has been playing an important role in the M-Taiwan Project to promote the development of the WiMAX industry in Taiwan. The research and development projects under the M-Taiwan Project are conducted by III, other research institutes and several private companies.