Qualcomm tightens its hold on mobile basebands
Despite new challengers and significant shake-up, the US firm will achieve lead in unit volume as well as revenue in 2012 says report
Published: 7 November, 2011
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Despite new challengers, Qualcomm will increase its domination of the mobile baseband chip market, becoming the leader by unit volume as well as revenue for the first time ever in 2012.
Qualcomm grabbed the top spot from Texas Instruments in 2007, in revenue terms, but has not enjoyed that position in unit terms too, because of the competition from low cost suppliers playing mainly at the 2G end. It has had to defend its revenue lead against aggressive attacks from the most powerful of those low cost vendors, MediaTek of Taiwan, this year, as well as from Intel/Infineon, but has been highly successful, according to a new report from Linley Group, which gives it the baseband lead in volumes too. Earlier this year, another survey by Strategy Analytics estimated Qualcomm's mobile baseband share at over 41% by revenue.
The handset baseband market has been in turmoil for the past few years, with some players virtually exiting this sector - notably Texas Instruments and Freescale - and others expanding, such as Renesas Mobile, following its purchase of Nokia's inhouse modem business, and China's Spreadtrum. Among the traditional mobile semiconductor majors, players like Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson and more recently Broadcom have been chasing ever-more integrated systems-on-chip incorporating the baseband, processors and other elements. And that has brought app processor specialists like Nvidia and Intel into the race, both making baseband acquisitions (Icera and Infineon Wireless respectively) to enable them to play in the all-in-one market.
Looking at the mobile chip market overall, the Linley report predicts growth of almost 40% between 2010 and 2015, with revenue rising from $21.4bn to $29.9bn. This forecast covers chips in five categories - cellular basebands, application processors, Bluetooth transceivers, mobile Wi-Fi chips, and GPS receivers.
"The mobile market has changed dramatically in the last few years, subjecting both mobile device manufacturers and chip vendors to significant shifts in market share," said chief analyst Linley Gwennap. Wi-Fi is the most rapidly growing mobile chip segment, says the report, with 111% growth projected between 2010 and 2015.
Finally breaking into the Nokia account, as well as strengthening its position at Apple, will help drive Qualcomm to achieve mobile chip revenue of $9.7bn in 2012, according to the analysts. They also see Broadcom as a big winner, gaining 14.7% of revenue across all mobile chip categories by 2015, largely because of its existing strength in Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/GPS 'combo' chips, which will also start to include other options such as NFC. However, Broadcom will also finally see serious growth in its 3G baseband activities.
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