Pininfarina reaches cell phone deal with Motorola

PARIS (Reuters) - Motorola has struck a deal for Ferrari designer Pininfarina to create dozens of mobile phones over the next three years, Paolo Pininfarina, chairman and chief executive of Pininfarina Extra, told Reuters on Monday.

Italy's Pininfarina, famous for its sleek, sexy sports car designs, would dedicate a team of 10 to try give the same allure to Motorola phones, Pininfarina said in an interview during the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.

"Design is important now, it's what makes the difference. Technology is pretty available to all, but design sets apart," Pininfarina told Reuters by telephone from the Turin-based firm's headquarters.

"The Motorola deal that we have just signed will run from March 2006 to March 2009."

Pininfarina declined to disclose the value of the deal and said details would be released after its board meeting next month.

But he said it was likely follow the lines of an earlier shorter-term agreement where the Italian house produced two designs a month for the mobile phone giant.

Mobile phone companies struggling to differentiate products through technology are luring leading furniture, homeware and car designers to try inject must-have status into their phones by the way they look.

Pininfarina's 2005 iPEN concept recalls the curves of one of its vintage Ferrari or Maserati sports cars, while the i833 has the aerodynamism of a Hollywood movie Batmobile.

Pininfarina said mobile phone design business now made up 30 percent of Pininfarina's nonautomotive business, having started from nothing just over two years ago.