Irish microchip designer Parthus yesterday shrugged off the gloom surrounding technology shares by introducing a product it claims would place it at the heart of the predicted boom in demand for internet-enabled "smart" mobile phones.

Parthus shares bucked the wider sell-off to close up 27.5p at 296.5p after announcing that it had developed a chip called InfoStream in conjunction with palmtop computer maker Psion and chip designer ARM Holdings. Motorola is the first manufacturer to take a licence the product.

InfoStream would be the world's most advanced mobile internet computing platform built on a single chip, the companies said. Parthus chief operating officer Kevin Fielding said the chip would make mobile phones "smart" by turning them into personal organisers without consuming large amounts of battery power.

"There are only about 25m personal digital assistants in use worldwide today but there are expected to be about a billion mobile phones in use in three years' time, so we're attacking a very big market," he said.

"InfoStream offers great functionality and performance, and consumes very little power. If the chip were powered by a traditional AA battery it would run on standby for about five years."

Independent research group Cahners In-Stat predicts there will be 740m mobile internet devices in use by 2004, allowing users continuously to surf the web, send emails, and access address books and diaries.

Several technologies are competing to become the standard platform for these new phones. Infostream has been designed to power Symbian, a Psion backed consortium, but will also run on Pocket-PC, Palm and Linux.

Licence and royalty revenue projections have not been disclosed but income will be shared by the three partners in the InfoStream project, with Parthus taking the bulk.

The Parthus share price rise was also supported by the release of better than expected figures for the three months to September 30. Revenues rose from $4.9m to $8.6m year on year but losses widened from £653,000 to £2.2m.