Taiwan-based chipset maker MediaTek is committed to bring “smart features” such as web, apps and Internet service previously available only on smartphones to basic, feature phones.
The chip maker announced a partnership with Yahoo that allows services such as News, Messenger, Finance and Weather to be pre-installed on MediaTek chips via its Maui Runtime Environment (MRE) middleware platform. The platform also allow third party mobile developers to deploy services and content on the phones.
MediaTek said it has been working closely with handset brands such as Cherry Mobile(Philippines), Spice Group, Spice CSL(Malaysia) and Nexian(Indonesia) to develop products based on the MRE technology, and is also negotiating with other brands for cooperation.
The MRE platform is quite similar to the Java platform. MediaTek said that MRE offers several benefits including the smaller amount of space needed to deploy the OS compared to Java.
MediaTek forecast that total shipments of its handset ICs will likely reach 550-600 million units in 2011, compared to about 500 million units shipped last year.
[Source]- MediaTek
P.s: Is this the same “smartphone” offered in the DiGi OMG Package?
