TOKYO-NEC Electronic Corp. wants to make chips off its old block.
The semiconductor unit of NEC Corp said it will work together with the parent company to develop dual-mode chipsets that will combine W-CDMA with GSM/GPRS and EDGE technologies.
The project, which is estimated to cost up to $96 million in investment, will make chips available in mobile phones between October 2006 and March 2007, according to Hirokazu Hashimoto, executive vice president of NEC Electronics.
He said 70 percent of the baseband chips will be supplied to NEC, while the rest will be sold outside the NEC line.<p
