Agere inks deal to boost handsets

Agere Systems has announced new partnerships with mobile software providers esmertec and Openwave in a bid to boost its play for wireless handset suppliers.

The licensing deals will add multimedia functions to phones on the GPRS global-networking standard.

According to a press release by the company, “Agere has selected esmertec’s Java software technology to enable advanced mobile phone applications such as video games, instant messaging, news and other information. In addition, Openwave is providing Agere with wireless application protocol browser capabilities and differentiated multimedia messaging services such as photo messaging, graphics, mapping, and location-based services.”