Agere Chipsets to Power Samsung Multimedia Phones

Agere Systems Inc. signed a deal with Samsung Electronics
Co. to provide chipsets and software for its new generation of multimedia
mobile phones. The one-year contract is said to be worth more than $150
million.

Samsung’s new, smaller phone are designed for improved sound and larger
screen size for Internet access, photo exchange, video downloads and video
game playing.

In a statement issued Wednesday by Agere, the company said Samsung will use
Agere’s Global Packet Radio System for its advanced mobile phones. Samsung’s
SGH-S200 and SGH-S300 phone models offer short messaging capabilities, while
the SGH-V205 includes a built-in digital camera and is able to handle
multimedia messaging services.

According to Dataquest, Samsung is the third leading mobile handset
manufacturer in the world, and if sales of the new multimedia phones
increase, Agere stands to gain over the next year, and possibly longer, if
the contract is extended past 2003.

Samsung’s new GPRS-enhanced phones are based on the Global System for Mobile
(GSM) communications standard, used by more than two-thirds of the world’s
mobile phone users. In addition to improved high-resolution color LCD
displays, the phones utilize polyphonic sound technology and will be able to
play Java-enabled video games.

The Samsung Class 8 GPRS mobile phone handsets are able to receive data at
up to 50 kilobits per second. The SGH-200 and SGH-S300 feature tri-band
capability, 40-tone polyphonic sound and are compactly designed.

Back in October 2002, In-Stat/MDR came out with a report entitled “Worldwide
Wireless Data/Internet Market: Bright Spots in a Dark Industry,” which said
the wireless Internet market will grow from 74 million users at the end of
2001 to 320 million users by the end of 2006.

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