Nokia and Intel launch joint research lab

US computer chip giant Intel and Finland's Nokia, the world's leading mobile phone maker, said Tuesday they had opened a joint research laboratory on Finland's northwestern coast.

Intel, whose processors power nearly 80 percent of computers worldwide, said in a statement the centre would "employ about two dozen research and development professionals."

The centre is hosted at the University of Oulu, which said the lab's research activities had "started gradually in August."

Intel said the lab would work on developing "interfaces that are more similar to interactions in the real world," with the aim of making the use of a mobile phone "more natural and intuitive, in the same way that modern games and movies are more immersive through the use of realistic 3-D graphics."

The company added another potential area of research "could look into technologies that allow displaying a 3-D hologram of the person you are talking to on the phone, a capability only found in science fiction movies today."

Nokia has been struggling in the smartphone segment, loosing market share to Apple's iPhone, and posting a quarterly net profit down 40 percent in July. It is set to launch its already delayed Symbian 3 platform by the end of the year.

(c) 2010 AFP