Already enjoying more than 140 million users on its service, Twitter has today announced a partnership with chip maker MediaTek which will see its service embedded on millions of “smart feature phone” devices all over the world.
As part of the deal, MediaTek will preload the Twitter feature phone application in its MRE middleware, providing a reference design for mobile handsets. Vendors can then add Twitter services on their devices with little or no memory impact or requirement for powerful hardware, encouraging Twitter usage no matter the handset model.
Twitter has made sure its native feature phone platform will provide a similar experience to its iPhone and Android apps, tools that were updated just yesterday with new features and UI improvements.
The partnership follows a similar move by social networking rival Facebook, which announced its own deal with Mediatek in November 2011. The partnership saw Facebook embedded into MediaTek’s mobile platform solutions, providing mobile device owners in emerging countries with access to Facebook via affordable handsets.
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MediaTek’s MT6255 ARM9 chipset will be the first to carry Twitter applications. The chip has a clock speed of 416 MHz and has both SAW and RTC embedded to the chipset to avoid external components. The chip also provides long battery life, supports WVGA display resolutions and can play back most modern video formats. It also supports the installation of Opera Mini, allowing users to save data when visiting mobile websites.
MediaTek says that it will roll out Twitter applications on all of its mobile solutions in the near future.
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