Joint development of 3G platform coming from six manufacturers

We like it when some high-powered cellphone manufacturers get together and try to get everyone in the sandbox to play nice together -- at least in the Pacific Rim area. Mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo and handset makers Renesas Technology, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp and Sony Ericsson said they will be developing a new handset platform to integrate 3G and 2G technologies in the same handset. This makes perfect sense, as almost all global wireless phones right now operate on 2G networks as 3G tech like HSDPA, W-CDMA and EV-DO Revision A make inroads to customers (and handsets) to put that portable broadband speed in your pocket. Combining HSDPA / W-CDMA and GSM / GPRS / EDGE, this consortium of companies want to make sure that bridge between the old and the new is as seamless as possible -- as to not disrupt all those stubborn business models that are rapidly changing with all this data flying around in the air now. Detail include an LSI chip that supports HSDPA and platform support for common functions and middleware to play nice with all the current mobile phone operating systems like Symbian and such.