Published: 15 June, 2010
In the run-up to the Femtocell World Summit in London next week, the main silicon provider in the burgeoning market, picoChip, has added a further $20m to its warchest, bringing its venture capital funding to date to $110m.
The financing came from existing investors - Atlas Venture, Highland Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Pond Ventures, Rothschild, Samsung and Scottish Equity Partners - and was announced to coincide with the sale of the firm's one millionth chip. Many of these have been targeted at residential femtocells, which are starting to roll out in earnest this year with many flagship carriers.
picoChip is also pushing its platform and systems-on-chip into the expansion markets for femto technology - larger versions of the miniature base stations to support enterprise and metrozone requirements, and the move to LTE.
The UK firm has enjoyed a firm grip on the merchant market for femto silicon during the warm-up phase of the market, and is seeking to capitalize on that headstart and gain scale, in order to fend off the larger competitors, notably Qualcomm, that plan to enter the game over the coming year. "As we execute against our plan we have raised additional equity funding that will set the company on an even steeper growth curve," said CEO Nigel Toon in his statement. Other priorities for the new money will be accelerated development of new LTE and HSPA+ products and self-organizing technology.
Currently, picoChip says it is on track for more than 50% quarter-on-quarter revenue growth in calendar Q210, driven mainly by the picoXcell femto range. The company now claims 25 femtocell customers supporting HSPA(+), LTE and China's TD-SCDMA.
A dozen operators now have live femtocell deployments, with Vodafone Spain the most recently announced, while a further 45 or so are engaged in trials. ABI Research believes femto shipments will exceed 40m units in 2014.
Toon added: "Technology advances like 'flat architecture' and 'small cell' will mean a radical shake-up in the established landscape."