(Yicai Global) Feb. 23 -- Chinese state-run technology giant Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd. and Intel Corp. will cooperate to develop a 5G smartphone platform oriented towards the Chinese market and based on Intel chip technologies, they announced yesterday.

Unigroup will collaborate with Intel through the former's affiliated chip supplier Unigroup Spreadtrum & RDA, sci-tech website Mydrivers.com reported. They are expected to introduce the mobile phone platform next year when construction of China's 5G network finishes. The two will work together long-term to explore markets and develop products.

Unigroup Spreadtrum is a core Unigroup unit formed by merging Spreadtrum Communications Inc. and RDA Microelectronics (two Shanghai-based chip enterprises Unigroup acquired in 2013 and 2014, respectively). Unigroup Spreadtrum ranked number 10 globally in integrated circuit production scale, per data from market research institution IC Insights.

Unigroup is a scientific research firm affiliated with Tsinghua University, a topnotch Beijing university. Its ultimate controller is China's education ministry. Other key subsidiaries of Unigroup are Unigroup Guoxin Co. and Wuhan Yangtze River Storage Technology Co.

Apple Inc. is negotiating with Yangtze River Storage to buy the latter's memory devices to install them on iPhones in the Chinese market in Apple's first purchase of storage devices from a Chinese maker, the Nikkei reported yesterday.