Ericsson and ST Microelectronics are going to grab their mobile chip units and smack them together in one place.

The two companies will create a 50/50 joint venture made up of Ericsson Mobile Platforms and ST-NXP Wireless. ST supplies Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson with chips, whilst Ericsson delivers to Sony-Ericsson, LG Electronics and Sharp.

According to the companies, 'the complementary product portfolios contributed by the parent companies will deliver significant scale and synergies by leveraging and expanding the existing strategic cooperation between Ericsson Mobile Platforms and ST-NXP Wireless.'

The fabless joint venture will employ somewhere around 8,000 people. Added together, the two units shipped chips worth $3.6 billion last year.

The new operation will be led by a development and marketing company with a staff of 7,000 employees. A platform design company with a staff of 1,000 will give the development entity what it needs, namely platform designs. Being fabless, chips and solutions will be manufcatured by ST Microelectronics and unspecified external providers. The joint venture will be based in Geneva, Switzerland and have a board of directors made up of four bigwigs from Ericsson and ST Micro.

ST-NXP Wireless was formed at the end of July 2008. ST Micro called NXPs 20% stake in the company and kicked the firm out to hook ST-NXP Wireless up with Ericsson Mobile Platforms. Ericsson formed its Mobile Platforms division at the beginning of September 2001. The unit churned out 2.5G and 3G chipset designs for handsets.

ST-NXP Wireless claims to have a strong offering of TD-SCDMA chips up its sleeve. TD-SCDMA is the Chinese home-grown 3G mobile standard, which will start to be rolled out end of this year after the Chinese mobile market has been restructured. X