Following its official acquisition of US-based ADI's mobile phone IC business, Taiwanese fabless IC design house MediaTek plans to start manufacturing 3G chipsets leveraging on Taiwanese TSMC's 65nm process technology by year-end 2008, which marks MediaTek's foray into the 3G mobile phone IC market, Commercial Times of Taiwan reported on July 29.

The company's 3G WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) chipset, codenamed SoftFone-W, is still awaiting certification by Samsung. The SoftFone-W chipset supports both WCDMA and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution) standards. Should the certification be granted, shipment for Samsung is expected to begin by the first quarter of 2009, according to the same source. Further details have not yet been disclosed.