Alain Dutheil, chief executive of ST Ericsson, is looking to the North American and Chinese markets to generate growth and pull the newly created European mobile chipmaker into profit.

In particular, Mr Dutheil would like to get ST Ericsson’s chips into future versions of Apple’s iPhone, or Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. Apple currently uses chips from ST Ericsson’s German rival Infineon, while the latest BlackBerrys use Qualcomm chips.