Electronics makers Toshiba Corp., Taiyo Yuden Co. and the Japan unit of IBM Corp. said Thursday they have established a joint venture to regulate usage of the Bluetooth wireless technology logo in Japan.
The new company is expected to help promote products that use the technology, which enables wireless links between digital devices, the companies said.
Capitalized at 40 million yen and owned 80.5 percent by Toshiba, 10 percent by Taiyo Yuden and 9.5 percent by IBM Japan Ltd., BTQ Corp. will start operations in April and is expected to earn more than 1 billion yen in sales by fiscal 2005.
A trademark of Ericsson of Sweden and jointly promoted by Nokia Corp., Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., 3Com Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc. and Microsoft Corp., Bluetooth is expected to be used in some 700 million consumer devices worldwide by 2005, they said.