ST-Ericsson enables much greater choice in smartphone market

ST-Ericsson, a global leader in mobile platforms and semiconductors, has expanded its smartphone portfolio to enable device manufacturers to quickly develop handsets with open operating systems and high-end multimedia features at a range of different price points.

ST-Ericsson‘s new family of platforms will move the smartphone market forward by enabling consumers to choose a device that both suits their budget and provides the right combination of multimedia capabilities for them. The new platforms support open operating systems, such as Symbian and Linux, a rich web experience, a wide range of immersive applications and high-definition video. They also use ST-Ericsson’s new power-efficient dual-core architecture to ensure that manufacturers can create powerful advanced smartphones with long battery lives.

Based on the existing U8500 solution, the extended smartphone portfolio allows handset manufacturers to reuse software across both high-end and mainstream smartphones, significantly speeding up the development cycle and reducing their R&D costs. ST-Ericsson will also add TD capabilities to the new portfolio so that handset makers can quickly develop smartphones for China's rapidly growing TD-SCDMA mobile standard.

“We are on the cusp of a new era in the smartphone market in which consumers across the world will be able to find a model that exactly meets their price and features criteria,” said Marc Cetto, Senior Vice President and head of 3G and Multimedia division at ST-Ericsson. "This new range of platforms will make it cost-effective for handset makers to dramatically expand their smartphone portfolio.

Today, ST-Ericsson unveiled the U5500 - the second member of the extended smartphone family after the U8500. With a dual-core application processor, an HSPA+ broadband modem, support for high-definition 720p video, up to 12 Mpixel cameras, 80 hours of music play time, up to 10 hours of talktime, 35 days of standby and enhanced 3D, the U5500 will enable handset makers to bring next-generation smartphone technologies to the mainstream market. The U5500 will be sampling in the third quarter of 2010.