HTC To Develop Smartphone Chip With ST-Ericsson

Taiwanese handset maker HTC is to join Apple, Samsung and Huawei in developing its own application processor in a partnership with ST-Ericsson, according to a report.

China Commercial Times reported that HTC has signed a memorandum of understanding with ST-Ericsson to create a chipset for entry-level smartphones.

Breaking with Qualcomm

Until last year, HTC used Qualcomm as its sole chip supplier, but the company began looking at other options earlier this year following a weak fourth quarter.

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February HTC announced that the non-LTE versions of the One X handset would run Nvidia’s quad-core 1.5GHz Tegra 3 chipset, while LTE variants would run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip.

The ST-Ericsson chips, due to ship in products sometime next year, are reportedly aimed at lower-end smartphones, where HTC competes with ZTE and Huawei.

Restructure

ST-Ericsson, a Geneva-based fabless chip design company, was founded in 2009 as a 50-50 joint venture of Ericsson and STMicroelectronics. China Commercial Times’ report coincides with a restructure announced by ST-Ericsson on Monday that will see it transferring its application processor development business to STMicroelectronics.

ST-Ericsson said it will focus increasingly on processors for smartphones and tablets and the restructure will save ST-Ericsson about $320m (£198m) per year while shedding around 1,700 jobs.

ST-Ericsson supplies dual-core chips for Nokia Windows Phones, which use the company’s NovaThor platform, and Sony has also announced devices based on NovaThor.

Earlier this month HTC announced its first quarter net income was $151 million (£95m), a 70 percent decline from a year earlier.

How much do you know about smartphones? Take our quiz.