Matsushita Opens Development Laboratory in Europe

TOKYO (03/28/2000) - Japan's Matsushita Electronic Components Co. Ltd., a unit of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., plans to open this weekend a new European development laboratory that will focus on components for next generation mobile communications, the company, which is better known by its Panasonic brand name, said today.

The new Communications Laboratory of European Technology Center will be opened this Saturday, April 1, in Luneburg, Germany, the company said in a statement.

Matsushita said it is locating the center in Europe because the continent is expected to play a leading role in the development of new mobile communications systems and technology. It is this new market that the lab is charged with investigating and then, based on what it learns, developing new components.

The center will focus on all main areas of mobile communications systems, from the base stations that communicate with mobile terminals to the terminals themselves, and the communications standards with which they communicate.

It will promote the company's existing RF (radio frequency) components which have been developed for mobile systems and also spearhead research and development of new devices for the market. Such devices include VCOs (voltage controlled oscillators), PLL (phase locked loop) synthesizers, U/D (up/down) converters, filters, LNAs (low noise amplifiers) and power supply units.

The company opened a similar technical center in the U.S. in October 1997. That center has worked on research and development in the fields of information and communications and automotiveelectronics and succeeded in getting Matsushita components integrated into reference designs and entering technical agreements with local companies, it said.

Matsushita Electronic Components Co. Ltd., in Osaka, can be found online at http://www.panasonic.co.jp/.