LG Electronics is reportedly trying to lessen its dependence upon manufacturers of Application Processors (AP) for its smartphones, by designing its own chips.

The Korean Electronic Times Internet reported that LG Electronics is currently working on a smart phone application processor (AP) before releasing a handset equipped with it next year.

The new chips will be optimized to power LG's own smartphones, the reports said, following similar strategies by smarphone rivals Apple and Samsung Electronics.

Last month LG joined Linaro, a "not-for-profit" engineering organization that develops open source Linux software for the ARM architecture. LG and LINARO said they planned to cooperate on new ARM technologies.

So far LG has used APs of various suppliers such as NVIDIA, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm. However, this fragmentation has resulted to delays in the development of new products.