Phone Wars - The Hardware September 17, 2009

With over 1.2 billion devices sold in 2008, mobile devices have by far outnumbered PCs unit sales. An ongoing frenzy for higher data bandwidth, fast replacement cycles and ever increasing worldwide mobile phone penetration make this an attractive market for semiconductor manufacturers. However, wireless technology brings a new set of very demanding business and technical challenges to volume semiconductor manufacturing namely ultra low power technologies to reach a long battery lifetime.

At the same time, the chipsets have to provide the high data bandwidth and support additional functionality such as cameras, audio/ video player and GPS. On top of that, patent issues create a climate of uncertainty in a high stake business as recent settlements between Broadcom and Qualcomm (at $891m) and Nokia and Qualcomm demonstrate.

Semiconductor manufacturers need economies of scale to cope with these issues. As a result we have seen several wireless semiconductor manufacturers engaging in M&A activities like Infineon + LSI, Mediatek + Analog Devices and ST Microelectronics + NXP + Ericsson Mobile Platforms and even prominent players like TI and Freescale are announcing their exit from the merchant market for wireless baseband semiconductors.

* What are the current challenges wireless semiconductor manufacturers are facing?
* What are the critical success factors regarding business model, alliances, IPR and tools?
* What are the hot trends with regards to devices (phone, smart phone, netbook)?
Will we see some sort of convergence?
* What will be the next major disruptive change?
Will new post-3G technologies like LTE or WiMAX change the game plan?
Will semiconductor manufacturers, device OEMs or mobile operators be in the driver seat?
* How is wireless semiconductor manufacturing being hit by the current economic downturn?

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