NEC Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp. announced Monday that they will jointly develop large-scale integration (LSI) chips for 3G mobile phone consoles to strengthen the competitiveness of NEC's 3G mobile terminal platforms for the global market.

The two leading Japanese electronic companies have set up a joint project team and begun developing a dual-mode 3G baseband LSI chip that can deal with both 2G and 3G mobile phone consoles, the two companies said in a joint statement.

Under the joint development deal, NEC's mobile terminals business unit will be responsible for defining basic LSI specifications and verifying the LSI to be embedded in the mobile terminals.

Meanwhile NEC Electronics, which holds the largest share of the domestic market for LSI chips for 3G mobile phone communications, will be responsible for the LSI chip design, development and production.

The first mobile terminal to employ the LSI chip developed under the project will be introduced to the market in the second half of fiscal 2006. The two companies plan to launch the phones in overseas markets as well, and NEC Electronics plans to provide the LSI chips to other mobile phone console manufacturers.

With the joint development project, NEC aims to bring its earnings on mobile phone operations into the black after incurring losses in the April-September period, first half of fiscal 2004.