Market
FCC Gets Unlicensed White Space Autonomy
In a last-minute compromise reached by House and Senate leaders on Thursday, both sides agree to pay for the payroll tax cut by auctioning off $22 billion worth wireless spectrum — expected to total some 120 MHz, from UHF channel 31 to 51.
Full Story at DailyWireless.org.
Official: Sony and Ericsson are divorced
Sony will rename Sony Ericsson “Sony Mobile Communications”, and further integrate the mobile phone business as a vital element of its electronics business, with the aim of accelerating convergence between Sony’s lineup of network enabled consumer electronics products, including smart phones, tablets, TVs and PCs.
Full Story at The Register.
Toumaz and Imagination form low-power wireless chip firm
Toumaz Microsystems gets all of the Toumaz chip design team and will focus on the design, development and sale of ICs and solutions for radios embedded in internet-connected devices in markets including: home automation, enterprise automation, healthcare, smart power, security,
Full Story at Electronics Weekly.
Airlines join opposition to LightSquared project
Thomas Hendricks, SVP of airline trade group Airlines for America, said in written testimony to a US House hearing that LightSquared would have “ruinous effects” on aviation navigation systems because of signal interference and added.
Full Story at Rethink Wireless.
Samsung Cuts LTE Cost in Half
The Galaxy Nexus sports a new version of the LTE baseband chip. The new chip is estimated at nearly half the cost of the prior chip’s $23 price tag. This type of cost reduction is an important milestone in securing the rapid migration to LTE throughout the world.
Full Story at ABI.
Apple’s Mobile Share
Apple reached 75% of profit share, nearly 40% of revenue share and 9% of units share.
Two great posts from Asymco here and here.
North Carolina Officially Launches the First Commercial TV White Spaces Network
Spectrum Bridge Enables Wilmington / New Hanover County and the Wireless Industry to Launch First FCC-Approved Smart City Using TVWS.
Full Story at Market Watch.
LTE report
The Global Mobile Suppliers Association reports that there are now 269 LTE-enabled user devices, manufactured by 57 companies. It’s a six-fold jump in six months. The GSMA also noted the number of LTE-enabled tablets has doubled in the past six months.
Full Story at DailyWireless.org
Maxim acquires LTE chip firm
Genasic was founded by Ashok Dhuna who served as CEO. Dhuna was previously vice president of RF engineering at Sequans and prior to that he was chief technology officer and founder of Synad Technologies Ltd., a fabless wireless LAN chipmaker sold to STMicroelectronics in 2003.
Full Story at EE Times.
Can the BlackBerry recover?
The August comScore mobile survey (MobiLens) is out. It measures the penetration or consumption of various mobile products and services in the US over a three month period.
I track the change in this data over time. Here are some highlights:
In August …
Finding Value in Android
Merrill Lynch reports Recent data suggests that the mobile Internet and the Android platform in particular is getting better-than-expected traction, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s comments implying that Google could eventually generate $10 per phone suggest that Google is sitting on an untapped mass-market revenue
opportunity.
While some our business model estimates will likely prove to be [...]
Seven Significant Trends in Mobile Usage
eMarketer reports with mobile penetration in the US estimated by eMarketer at nearly 80% this year, and the increasing sophistication of handsets, there is a mature mobile market with a critical mass of users increasingly receptive to marketing and content. As the space becomes more important for marketers’ efforts, they must keep pace with the [...]
Finally Official? – Intel to buy Infineon Wireless for $1.4B
VentureBeat is reporting that Intel has agreed to purchase Infineon’s mobile chip business for $1.4 billion, the companies said late Sunday.
The move by the world’s largest chip maker will help boost the company’s presence in smartphones, which have begun to dominate the computing landscape. Rumors of the deal have been around for a while.
Analyst: Infineon, TI are second tier in mobile chips
EE Times reports Infineon, Marvell, Renesas and Texas Instruments are forming the second tier of chip suppliers to the mobile phone industry and the mobile business units of these companies are potentially liable to merger and acquisition activity, according to Mike Bryant, an analyst with Future Horizons.
Companies with even less [...]
LTE Patent Battle
DailyWireless reports The dream of driving down LTE royalty levels dramatically is fading, says Caroline Gabriel at Rethink Research. Intel and Samsung have sought to spearhead an open, transparent and low royalty structure for WiMAX patents and formed the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) in June 2008.
That doesn’t seem to be the case with LTE. Qualcomm [...]
Smartphone Comparison Chart
Lifehacker has a nice features chart here.
If you’re in the market for a current generation smartphone all the new features and specs can be confusing at best. This extensive—but easy to read!—chart will help you navigate the world of smartphone features and specifications.
Renesas Electronics to acquire Nokia’s wireless modem business
Espoo, Finland and Tokyo, Japan – Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and Nokia Corporation, the world leader in mobile communications, today announced that they are deepening their collaboration by forming a strategic business alliance to develop modem technologies for HSPA+/LTE (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access / Long-Term Evolution) and its evolution.
As [...]
More than 321 Million Handsets Shipped Globally in 2Q-2010
ABI reports Nokia continued to shed market share, declining to 34.5%
Samsung was #2
LG notched up an increase in share to 9.5%
RIM, with a 3.5% share
Apple with a 2.6% share
Motorola with a 2.6% share
Handset supplier revenue change
Source: BoA, Merrill Lynch