Qualcomm has announced that Taiwan's Acer Peripherals has licensed its technology for manufacturing wireless handsets based on the CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile telephony standard.
Financial details of the royalty-based agreement, which Qualcomm billed as a multi-million US dollar deal, were not released.
Acer Peripherals expects to introduce its first CDMA-based handsets in 1999, the company said in a statement. The Taoyuan-based maker of computer peripherals is no newcomer to the wireless communications market. Earlier this year, Acer Peripherals launched the G301, the company's second-generation GSM (global system for mobile communications) handset.
CDMA technology is slowly gaining acceptance in Asia, where South Korea stands out as a major market for the digital wireless communications technology standard.
However, Asia's rapidly growing market for digital mobile phone handsets and networks is still dominated by the competing GSM technology.
Qualcomm, in San Diego, California can be reached at +1-619-587-1121, or on the Web at http://www.qualcomm.com/. Acer Peripherals, in Taoyuan, Taiwan is at http://www.api.com.tw/.