Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) today announced that they have expanded their cooperation into the area of Series 60 product creation. ST's Nomadik family of multimedia application processors for 3G mobile devices have been adapted and optimized to support the Nokia Series 60 Platform, enabling faster handset development for Series 60 licensees.

ST will demonstrate the Series 60 Platform on the Nomadik processors at the CDMA Americas Congress at the Miami Beach Convention Center on September 28-30. The demonstration will showcase a Nomadik Development Kit built on the STn8800 (Nomadik) processor running on the Series 60 Platform. The solution will be available for Series 60 handset manufacturers before the end of 2004.

"We are very pleased to welcome STMicroelectronics to the Series 60 Product Creation Community. The commitment of silicon vendors will facilitate the acceptance of the Series 60 Platform across the industry," says Antti Vasara, Vice President, Nokia Technology Marketing and Sales. "Series 60 brings a feature rich software platform and multi-vendor economies of scale to the smartphone market, while ST's Nomadik platform family brings the essential requirements of low cost, low power, and high performance."

"The Series 60 Platform with ST's ultra-low-power Nomadik multimedia application processors will accelerate market acceptance of innovative third-generation (3G) handheld communication products and personal digital assistants (PDAs)," says Guy Lauvergeon, General Manager of STMicroelectronics' Multimedia Platform Unit. "It also represents a new level of cooperation between ST and Nokia."

The Nomadik open multimedia platform, winner of the Microprocessor Report's 2004 Best Application Processor of the Year Award, enables portable terminals, like mobile phones and PDAs, to play music, take pictures, record video, and host two-way video communications in real time. Based on an innovative architecture built around smart accelerators, Nomadik chips deliver best-in-class, 30-frames-per-second video images while minimizing power consumption and cost.

The Nomadik's interface to leading open-market wireless modems, along with its capability to run the Symbian operating system (Symbian OS), make for fast and complete integration with the Series 60 Platform. For its part, the Series 60 Platform serves as a complete smartphone software package that is a reliable software base that designers can customize to their own hardware designs. The platform is designed with standardization in mind while maintaining a high degree of flexibility.

The Series 60 Platform, built on the Symbian OS, is the world's leading smartphone platform. It is licensed by some of the foremost mobile phone manufacturers, including LG Electronics, Lenovo, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sendo, and Siemens. Support for the large color screen, easy-to-use interface, and extensive suite of applications make this software platform ideally suited to support new mobile services, such as rich content downloading and MMS.