They hope to initially help third-party contact-tracing apps run efficiently.
But ultimately, they aim to do away with the need to download dedicated apps, to encourage the practice.
The two companies believe their approach - designed to keep users, whose participation would be voluntary, anonymous - addresses privacy concerns.
Their contact-tracing method would work by using a smartphone's Bluetooth signals to determine to whom the owner had recently been in proximity for long enough to have established contagion a risk.
