Matsushita, best know for its consumer brand Panasonic, announced that it will "phase out" research, development and manufacturing of 2.5G mobile phones and transition to 3G technology instead. As part of the restructuring of its mobile operations, the company will shut down its research and development efforts of Panasonic Mobile Communications Development Corporation of USA, which developed operating system platforms for cellphones in the past.

Matsushita justified its move with increasing and "severe" competition in the 2.5G which led the company to work on next-generation mobile platforms as well as to "unify platforms and core technologies for the Japanese and overseas markets."

The firm said that it will "accelerate" the development of a global OS platform based on Linux that will be integrated into Matsuhita’s system LSI.