Agere defies a lacklustre market

Despite a lacklustre global demand for its communications chips, Agere Systems has performed well in China, clinching significant deals with two large mainland firms.

Consumer electronics specialist Amoisonic, a joint venture between the city of Xiamen and Solid (HongKong) Electronics, said yesterday it had selected Agere's wireless reference design to develop advanced General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) mobile phones for the China market.

A week earlier, networking gear-maker Fiberhome Telecommunications Technologies said it was purchasing Agere's Mars Lite chips and other devices to build next-generation metropolitan area networking equipment.

Agere officials saw these deals as confidence-boosting projects that put the company on track for other 'strong customer engagements' in areas such as GPRS, Wi-Fi, storage and enterprise networking in Asia.

Financial details were not provided.

Agere's GPRS chipsets and software have helped Shanghai-listed Amoisonic to reduce the size, cost and power consumption of its new Internet-ready mobile phones.

'Amoisonic is serving the growing China market with mobile handsets that offer the latest multimedia technology available, and through Agere's platform we will continue to develop high-performance, fully featured phones that push the boundaries of wireless data applications,' Amoisonic president Li Xiaozhong said.