(Beijing, December 09, 2004)

Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao today visited the world headquarters of Royal Philips Electronics in Amsterdam where he learned about Philips' contributions towards China's next-generation telecommunications. A phone call was made to Prime Minister Wen from Philips' partner T3G in Beijing using the new, China-developed 3G system, TD-SCDMA. The call symbolised the culmination of Philips' research and development work for the TD-SCDMA standard and represented Philips and T3G's joint commitment towards the future of TD-SCDMA in China.

With 300 million mobile phone subscribers by 2004, China has already become the world's leading mobile-device market. Worldwide, new, 3G (3rd Generation) technology has become one of the most anticipated innovations, enabling new services and applications on platforms much more efficient and versatile than the current 2G/2.5G networks. China government had already initialized research activities for 3G standard ization , namely TD-SCDMA (Time Division – Synchronous Coded Division Multiple Access) , as one of the international standards with Chinese proprietary intellectual property rights .

Philips started its research on TD-S CDMA related technology from 2000 , and is currently actively contributing to the progress of wireless communications in China. In January 2003, Philips, together with Datang and Samsung, formed the joint venture T3G, to deliver the latest TD-SCDMA reference designs and chipsets to local markets. T3G aims to provide a complete system solution to enable local handset manufacturers and cellular phone design houses to speed up production of TD-SCDMA terminals and other end-users equipment. Philips can already offer a solution for the dual-mode TD-SCDMA/GSM handsets that will ease operators' migration from 2G to 3G networks, enabling them to build up 3G subscriber numbers with minimal capital investment.

Dr Yonggang Du, head of the Wireless group of PREA, said, “We will use our unique capabilities over the entire spectrum, including 3G standards expertise and enhancements, adaptive transceiver algorithms, smart antenna and mobile network convergence solutions, to continue to contribute to the further development and implementation of 3G telephony in China.”

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