Japan’s largest telecom operator NTT Docomo has announced that they have made an agreement with five companies, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Semiconductor, NEC Corporation, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics to create a joint venture company by the end of March 2012 that would develop and sell semiconductor products for mobile devices.
NTT DOCOMO plans to invest 450 million Japanese yen (5.8 million USD) in the new joint venture company called Communication Platform Planning Co., Ltd by the middle of January that would develop feature-rich, low-power-consumption semiconductor products for LTE and LTE-Advanced mobile communication standards.
Currently NTT Docomo sells smartphones in Japan with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, including the latest Optimus LTE L-01D. They might use their own chips on their LTE phones once they start developing and also dominate other markets such as US, since they plan to sell them globally.