vnunet.com Asia news wrap: 13 February 2006

Asia news wrap: 13 February 2006

A mobile phone with a built-in projector could be on the market this year, perhaps providing an answer to the problem of how to fit a large display onto a small phone.

Taiwanese handset manufacturer Compal Communications will demonstrate a projector-equipped handset at the 3GSM World Congress trade show which begins today in Barcelona, according to a report in Taiwanese newspaper the Economic Daily News. The paper did not name a source for the story.

Compal Communications is a member of Taiwan's giant, but low-profile, Kinpo Group, a major manufacturer of mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs and notebooks.

Kinpo generated more than $11bn in revenue last year. Compal did not return a call from vnunet.com requesting further information on its plans.

Although some Kinpo products are sold under the Compal brand, most are made to order for international vendors which do not have their own manufacturing facilities, such as Dell Computer, and sold under their names.

Compal counts Motorola and Sony Ericsson among its recent mobile phone clients. The company will ship over 60 million handsets this year, up from around 40 million in 2005, according to analyst predictions.

**************************************

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, is seeking to cut costs by finding new suppliers for some components, according to a Taiwanese media report.

Established mobile phone makers like Nokia are facing increasing price pressure due to competition from low cost manufacturers in Asia.

Nokia is looking at LCD and LED driver chips, as well as other components, from several Taiwanese integrated circuit design houses, Digitimes reported, citing unnamed industry sources.

The handset giant buys most of its LCD driver integrated circuits from Samsung Electronics of Korea, and Japan's Renesas Technology. Nokia already gets some of the LCD panels used in its phones from Taiwanese manufacturers, the paper said.