By Christina Ruhngård

Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP) provide much more than a chip, in fact they do not even manufacture chips, but partner with manufacturers that make them based on their reference design and Intellectual Property Rights. These chips are then only sold to Ericsson Mobile Platforms’ customers.

The recipe is the know-how; it helps the customers develop their own mobile phones. This gives the customers a starting point and fast tracks the development at a lower cost. By using EMP’s platform technology phone, manufacturers can focus their resources on product differentiation in areas such as applications, industrial design, manufacturing, distribution and branding – getting advanced and attractive products with short time to market.

The recipe also guarantees that the mobile phone will work with major network vendors and operators, since it is a platform concept that has been thoroughly tested for interoperability by EMP.

EMP, a business unit within Ericsson, evolved through a process of separating the technology development, the platform, from the product development, the mobile phone. The process started back in the early nineties, and in 2001 the handset division within Ericsson was separated and the joint venture together with Sony, creating Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, was formed. Ericsson decided to keep the platform technology within the company, forming EMP.

A platform has a life cycle of about one and a half to two years. New platform versions build on previous designs, an advantage for EMP’s customers. The familiar design makes the transition to a new version easier. It also gives their customers the possibility of reusing investments made in hardware and software, making their overall development costs for new mobile phones lower. The platforms from EMP are built with extensive experience, having launched the technology commercially in over 250 million phones in over 100 countries.

The third generation (3G)

Video telephony, mobile TV, Internet access, multi-media capabilities and multi-mega pixel cameras; the demand for new applications and services are certainly making the world of mobile phones more complex. This is reflected in the amount of resources needed to develop the technology.

“It was obvious that with the new 3G network and the new 3G phones, it became incredibly difficult for very many companies to develop technologies… and we sensed that we could hardly sustain a world class technology development based on the number of phones Ericsson sold,” says Michael. “Investment costs in the technology have risen. If you for instance look at the number of lines of code in the software, it has increased tenfold over the last six to seven years…and the cost of developing the chips has also risen.”

In 2001, Ericsson Mobile Platforms became one of the first companies to license 3G technology platforms to mobile phone manufactures. And their customers can be found all over the world. Top manufactures, such as Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, Amoi, Sharp, LG and NEC, have all signed licence agreements with EMP.

EMP was the first platform provider in the world to have commercially launched handsets containing their WCDMA, EDGE and GPRS technologies. To date, 26 3G-mobiles based on their platforms have been launched, and more than 10 million 3G WCDMA devices have been made.

Manufacturers now have access to leading-edge technology. As Michael points out, “we are leading and standardizing the development in the next generation of cellular, we know what to build.” Ericsson is the single largest contributor to global standardization work and holds the world’s largest 2G, 2.5G and 3G IPR portfolios with more than 20,000 granted patents worldwide.

This article was originally published by Øresund IT Magasine (nr. 6 - 2005). You can download the magazine in PDF format on Publications.