Renesas targets S60 phones with chip

ALTHOUGH IT has won customers for its latest mobile phone chip, the SH-Mobile, in its home market with NTT Docomo, Renesas is hoping to expand outside Asia.

Hence it attended the S60 Summit in Barcelona this week to show off its wares. The company was showing a demo system to prove that the chip was perfectly capable of running S60.

Japan has, of course, plenty of Symbian based phones but, as far as the INQ knows, none of them run S60 but Docomo's own distinct flavour of Symbian instead.

Just like rival phone chip suppliers, Renesas has placed both the full telephony function and an applications processor inside a single chip.

To differentiate itself from the opposition, Renesas prides itself on the quality of its video support thanks to a built-in video accelerator. A company spokesperson also told the INQ the SH-Mobile chip also majors on its low power consumption.

Given the high level of competition in this segment of the mobile handset market, it will be interesting to see if Renesas achieves any major handsets clients in Europe or the USA. µ