ESPOO, Finland -- Nokia acknowledges that the OMAPI standard initiative, announced by STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments in December 2002, is a significant and positive step in building open mobile application processor interfaces, as well as boosting growth in the mobile industry. Harmonization in the application processor interfaces is becoming increasingly important as multimedia enabled mobile terminals and new applications are making their way to the mass market.The OMAPI standard provides the Open Mobile Application Processor Interfaces for application processors targeting 2.5G and 3G mobile phones, PDAs and other portable and multimedia products. The OMAPI standard will be comprised of a set of software interfaces to the operating system and a set of hardware interfaces defining common application peripherals. As part of the first phase of the initiative ST and TI have developed common software and hardware interfaces to maximize application software re-use and accelerate the design cycle, resulting in rapid innovation and faster time to market for mobile manufacturers."Nokia is pleased to see that the semiconductor industry is adopting a similar approach to its business as the mobile industry has done in respect to middleware harmonization through the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). By developing common interfaces, the semiconductor manufacturers significantly reduce the amount of work needed for implementing their products in mobile terminals. But even more importantly, the benefits of their cooperation extend across the entire mobile value chain by reducing complexity and fuelling innovation in terms of application and peripheral development and reducing cost. We are looking forward to seeing a strong success of the OMAPI initiative, and we expect that other companies in the mobile industry will also support the pioneering work done by STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments," says Yrjö Neuvo, Chief Technology Officer, Nokia Mobile Phones.Nokia Corp.