STOCKHOLM--Swedish telecommunications-equipment maker Ericsson said Friday it would sell other manufacturers licenses to build sophisticated new mobile-phone models, in a bid to boost the slowing wireless industry.
"We will provide instant access to cutting-edge technology, making it possible for all mobile-phone and wireless-device manufacturers to bring new advanced products to the market quicker and more cost efficiently," said Tord Wingren, who will run the Ericsson Mobile Platforms unit selling the licenses.
The announcement comes as U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley cut its ratings on four European mobile operators on concerns over a limited initial take-up of fast data transfer standard GPRS and possible delays in the launch of 3G (third-generation) services.
Morgan Stanley said GPRS, which allows users to stay always online and quickly download data from the Internet, would be only a niche market next year, diminishing operators' revenues.
3G telephony, promising multimedia on handsets, will not become a mass-market product until 2004 or 2005, Morgan Stanley said. It would also have to deal with the large handset size, cost and low battery life with which the industry struggles now.
One of the reasons for the slow start of GPRS is the small supply of GPRS handsets, now produced only by Ericsson and Motorola. The world's biggest cell phone manufacturer, Nokia, is expected to launch GPRS phones in September.
Ericsson will offer complete component specifications, printed circuit board layouts and software. It will also offer support and help customize the products.
Ericsson is the second mobile-phone maker to sell its technology in this way, following Motorola.
"We see the handset market going through the same transformation as the PC industry did earlier," Ericsson's head of technology, Jan Uddenfeldt, said.
"In the near future, few companies will deliver platform chipsets, but many companies will deliver handsets," he said.
"We have a unique position to benefit from this development based on our intellectual property rights portfolio and...know-how of systems, applications and handsets..."
Buying a license from Ericsson would be a way for a manufacturer to avoid the large research and development expenses and focus on application, design, distribution and branding, the company said.
Ericsson spokesman Roland Klein told Reuters that Ericsson has so far been licensing its handset technology very selectively and would now be offering it to everyone with a solid business case behind the project. He said the company would generate new revenues for Ericsson, but would not give any details.
Ericsson Mobile Platforms, based in Sweden, will stay within the Ericsson group when the company merges its handset operations with the mobile-phone unit of Japan's consumer-electronics group Sony on Oct. 1.
