Tunable antennas improve smartphone battery life and reduce dropped calls

Several popular smartphones shipped in 2011 with compact, integrated antenna tuners, the first of a wave of such tuners from Peregrine Semi, RFMD and others. We have been looking into the outlook for active antennas & tunable components in cellular phones by comparing the different suppliers and technical approaches and we are now convinced of an upbeat forecast of the market through 2017.

Mobile devices that support 4G, 3G and 2G in multiple bands have complex RF front-ends, with compromises in antenna performance that can degrade calls, as Apple learned last year.  Tunable components can reduce dropped calls and improve battery life, while simplifying the cellphone.

Significant new strategic avenues open for radio component vendors

Antennas with tunable impedance matching will bring success to some new entrants such as WiSpry and inevitably shake up the existing order among cellphone RF front-end component vendors.

The new ‘antenna tuner’ product category will emerge as an important piece of the cell phone RF front-end, and we expect antenna specialists including Ethertronics and Skycross, in combination with front-end component suppliers including Skyworks, RFMD, Avago Tech, TriQuint and Murata, to compete aggressively in this segment using GaAs, CMOS, RF MEMS and voltage-dependent dielectric variable capacitor technologies.

Stephen Entwistle

Client reading: The Strategy Analytics report, “Outlook for Active Antennas & Tunable Components in Cellular Phones”  reviews the prospects for tunable RF components, comparing the different approaches and suppliers, and provides an upbeat forecast of the market through 2017.

Mobile phone applications processors power today's smartphone apps and increasingly phones are promoted as packing "1GHz processors" or even "dual-cores".

Last week we published our smartphone applications processor market share data and by our estimates global applications processor revenue reached $1.84 billion in 1H 2010, up 60 percent over the same period the prior year, primarily thanks to the growth in smartphones. The increase in the smartphone market is real and it has been reflected in silicon vendors' revenues and shipments as many players are re-positioning themselves to tap into this growth. The battle between the baseband-integrated applications processor vendors and stand-alone applications processor vendors continues to fragment the market.

Here are some top-level insights from our quarterly smartphone applications processor market share tracker for 1H 2010:

• In just three years, the market for stand-alone apps processors has shrunk from around 72 percent of the total apps processor market to just 32 percent in unit terms in 1H 2010.

• Qualcomm led the overall smartphone applications processor market with 35 percent revenue share, thanks to its early-mover advantage in the Android ecosystem. Qualcomm's integrated applications processors, which combine advanced air interface technology and applications processing capability, are increasingly gaining acceptance in the smartphone market. Qualcomm's smartphone applications processor unit shipment share increased from just 3 percent in 2007 to 19 percent in 1H 2010.

• Texas Instruments (TI) led the market in unit terms with the help of its legacy Nokia relationship. TI ranked number two in the stand-alone applications processor category with 24 percent revenue share. We believe much of the TI's future growth depends on the traction for its OMAP4 series applications processors and it may prove difficult for the company if it fails to line up big customers for its OMAP4 series processors in 2011.

• Samsung's relationships with Apple and Samsung helped the company to reach number one in stand-alone category and number three overall in the smartphone apps processor market in revenue terms. Samsung is set to continue its momentum into 2011 with the help of Apple and Samsung.

• Marvell ranked number four in both revenue terms and unit shipment terms on the strength of its relationship with RIM. Marvell's ARMADA 618 / 628 high-performance processors are expected to be adopted by RIM for its smartphone and tablet products in 2011.

• Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Marvell, Renesas and ST-Ericsson together accounted for 98 percent of total smartphone applications processor unit shipments in 1H 2010.

Looking forward, we expect new players such as NVIDIA, Intel, Broadcom and MediaTek to attack the high-growth smartphone market with focused efforts in 2011. We also expect the stand-alone applications processor vendors to fight back with high-performance dual-core processors in 2011 which could potentially increase their value share in 2011.

- Sravan Kundojjala

Broadcom announced today that it will acquire privately held 4G chipset vendor Beceem Communications for $316 million. Beceem, founded in 2003, is the leading provider of WiMAX basebands and RF chips for portable and handheld WiMAX devices. The company also supplies WiMAX radio chipsets for gateways, routers and other fixed WiMAX customer premise equipment. Recently Beceem started to shift its emphasis to LTE with the announcement of its BCSM500 baseband, which will support both LTE and WiMAX. Broadcom so far hasn't announced its LTE plans publicly, and this acquisition signals that the company is looking to the future in the wake of growing competition and consolidation in the cellular baseband supplier base. Broadcom acquired GSM/GPRS/EDGE and W-CDMA technology through acquisitions, and these are now paying off, so it appears that Broadcom is repeating this strategy for LTE.

Beceem supplies basebands for all of the WiMAX USB dongles and data cards sold by Clearwire, the largest WiMAX operators in terms of subscribers. Beceem generated $43.7 million in revenue in 2009 with net loss of $17 million, but with shipments surpassing 1 million chips per quarter in Q3 '09 and sales having tripled since 2008, the company appeared headed for profitability by late 2010. Buoyed by this success, Beceem filed for an IPO initially thought to be worth more than $100 million in April '10. This would have made a nice down-payment to investors, which include Intel Capital, DoCoMo Capital, Samsung Venture Investment and NEC. Investment by all VCs in Beceem totals close to $200 million to date.

By August 2010, announcements of support for LTE by operators around the world made it clear that Beceem faced a weakening, or at best slower growth WiMAX market, cutting the value of its proposed IPO. With its new LTE-WiMAX baseband, Beceem could benefit from the launch of LTE by Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, and MetroPCS in North America, however, Beceem will not ship samples of its WiMAX-LTE baseband before Q1 ’11. After shipping its first samples and getting them designed into products, Beceem would still have to go through interoperability testing (IOT) with infrastructure vendors and demonstrate support for FDD and TDD in multiple channel bandwidths. The IOT process could take 18 months or longer, pushing LTE chip production out to mid-2012 or later for Beceem. In light of this, investors evidently saw risks in continuing to support Beceem, and decided to take Broadcom’s offer.

From Broadcom's perspective, the acquisition will allow Broadcom to offer home gateway / router platforms that incorporate 4G, Wi-Fi, cable, DSL and / or fiber optics, which would allow multiple users in a household to share a single wired or wireless broadband connection, cutting the monthly price per user. Of even more potential significance, the acquisition will allow Broadcom to eventually expand into LTE mobile devices. Until then, Broadcom can draw on Beceem’s success in WiMAX USB dongles, PC data cards and handsets to help fund development of LTE chipsets.

It seems likely that merchant baseband suppliers Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, Altair Semi, Icera, Renesas and Intel / Infineon will beat Broadcom to market in LTE, particularly in the rapidly growing “non-handset” (our term) segment of the mobile market consisting of USB dongles, PC data cards, M2M modules and related data-centric wireless modem devices. By our estimates, basebands for the non-handset mobile market accounted for about 12 percent of the total baseband market in revenue terms in 1H 2010. Currently Qualcomm, Icera, Infineon and ST-Ericsson have the leading market share in basebands for non-handsets, a market today dominated by 3G. An increasing proportion of future non-handset WWAN data modems will support LTE plus 3G, making LTE capability essential for firms to continue supplying basebands into this important segment. Note that compared to LTE + 3G, it appears that LTE + WiMAX mobile devices will at best represent a small niche market.

When Broadcom enters the LTE baseband market, we expect the company to offer chipsets with comprehensive support for legacy GSM air interfaces through W-CDMA / HSPA+, multi-mode / multi-band RF transceivers, plus optional Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / GPS, and optional ancillary chips for mobile TV and advanced video processing. Broadcom had only about 3.3 percent share of the cellular baseband market in unit terms in 1H 2010, but the company's market share in basebands is growing rapidly with design wins at top-tier OEMs.

Broadcom's acquisition of Beceem leaves other baseband start-ups Icera, Altair Semiconductor, Sequans and Wavesat as potential acquisition targets for established baseband / chipset vendors looking to expand into LTE. Of these start-ups, Altair Semiconductor, which sampled its first LTE baseband in September ’09, appears to be in the lead with LTE basebands now reaching early production status. Another firm to watch in LTE is Intel, which recently acquired WiMAX / LTE chipset start-up Comsys and announced its intention to acquire the cellular chipset product lines of Infineon. Intel Capital has a 20 percent stake in Beceem, so we can only speculate that Intel decided that acquiring Comsys and Infineon would offer better synergies and returns on investment given that Intel already ships WiMAX chipsets into the embedded laptop market.

Aside from LTE chipsets, Broadcom also has to solve is its smartphone applications processor challenges; by our estimates, Broadcom had no share in smartphone applications processors in 1H 2010. Broadcom scored design-wins in Nokia's Symbian^3 smartphones recently with its BCM2727 co-processor, but we believe that Broadcom has to integrate BCM2727 functionality into its basebands to score significant smartphone design-wins in the future.

As smartphone shipments grow as a percentage of total mobile phone shipments, processor suppliers also have to revise their strategies to tap into this growth. Who is well-positioned? We think baseband vendors are well positioned to capture this growth given their leverage to work their existing OEM relations. To make the transition from the featurephone world to the smartphone world, processor vendors have to develop application processors and multimedia processors in addition to cellular baseband processors.

The game is no longer about slim modems. Based on our research many of the leading baseband vendors are missing the growth opportunities in the smartphone segment. Estimates in our recent report entitled “Can Baseband Vendors Translate Their Success into the Smartphone Market?” reveal that the cumulative smartphone apps processor unit shipment share of Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, MediaTek, Infineon and Broadcom was just 21 % in 2009 despite their cumulative overall baseband unit shipment share of about 65%. What this means is that baseband vendors have not been too successful in converting their baseband design-wins into apps processor design-wins so far.

A chip vendor's success in the smartphone world comes from scoring design-wins at top-tier smartphone OEMs and supporting software platforms that have market momentum. This is one of the reasons why baseband vendors missed the smartphone boat as many of them were focusing on feature phone and basic phone segments. We think there is enough room for dynamism in the smartphone processor market as new entrants like Intel come into the value chain. If Intel acquires Infineon, as rumoured, that could put more pressure on stand-alone processor vendors, such as NVIDIA, that currently lack baseband products. Interesting times ahead. We’ll be watching how baseband vendors expand their value offering to crack the smartphone and other emerging devices markets.

It's hard not to see that mobile software platform players are positioning themselves as a one-stop shop to offer an integrated experience to their target customers. What this means is that more and more 3rd party functionality and apps are now built right into the core of the platform. This kind of software verticalization is good only as long as the core platform functionality outclasses the stand-alone 3rd party functionality. But the problem starts when a platform vendor packs an inferior solution into the core of the platform and limits platform flexibility. This could threaten that platform's long-term credibility too. For example, if a mobile software platform player is bundling their own browser, media player, and internet services with the core platform they should make sure that these applications and functionality are comparable to other best-in-class solutions.

There are couple of ways a mobile software platform player can avoid inferior solutions into its software stack:

• By acquiring 3rd party companies that provide superior functionality over the platform's core functionality

• By ensuring that their platform is flexible enough to accommodate 3rd party functionality integration

Now let's get back to some real world examples. Android has so far proven flexible enough to accommodate 3rd party innovations that are superior to Android's built-in functionality. For example, some OEMs replaced the built-in onscreen keyboard with SWYPE; other OEMs replaced built-in multimedia functionality with their own stacks; and some OEMs even replaced Google's built-in internet services. This is one of the advantages with open source platforms. However, the down side of this flexibility is that the platform's consistency is compromised resulting in delayed updates to consumers. If Google stops OEMs from customizing Android then the platform could potentially suffer from a lack of innovation as Google becomes the single source of innovation. Now let's take a contrasting case: Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 (WP 7). With WP7 Microsoft appears to be taking control of the platform experience by limiting 3rd party apps to replace core platform experience. It seems that Microsoft is building much of the 3rd party functionality into the platform itself which could limit 3rd party innovation. The downside of this approach is that Microsoft needs to be at its best to make sure that the platform's core functionality is superior to 3rd party functionality. Failing to do so could result in losing share to more flexible open source ecosystems.

This is definitely an interesting dynamic to keep an eye on as mobile software platform players increasingly try to integrate 3rd party functionality into the core of their platforms. Winners will be those who strike a balance between consistency and flexibility. There seems no clear winner in this aspect for now as many players are still in the process of building integrated mobile software platforms.

Nokia announced today that Renesas will acquire its wireless modem technologies business for $200 million and the transaction is expected to close before the end of 2010. Renesas has offered GSM PAs and transceivers for the mainstream GSM market for more than a decade but lacked basebands. More recently, Renesas entered the baseband market with W-CDMA basebands for Japan and plans to provide complete chipsets and PAs for the global market. Renesas merged with NEC Electronics in April 2010 and most recently joined the Symbian Foundation.

Previously Nokia transferred its 3G IC design operations to ST-Ericsson, licensed its W-CDMA/HSPA modem technology to Intel and collaborated with Infineon for LTE RF transceivers development. This announcement raises a question whether Nokia will continue to own the IP and earn royalties for legacy basebands, GSM through W-CDMA / HSPA+?

This is a significant development considering Renesas' lack of baseband design-wins outside Japan. Strategy Analytics estimates that Renesas and NEC Electronics cumulatively held just 1.3 percent of the baseband market (in revenue terms) in 2009. Renesas originally licensed baseband technology from Japanese network operator NTT docomo to produce the SH-Mobile G series baseband processors, which also integrate Renesas' application processing technology. Most recently Renesas sampled a fourth generation of SH-Mobile G baseband processors, the SH-G4, which supports the HSPA air interface.

This partnership with Nokia provides Renesas with three different sources for fundamental 3G modem IP, NTT docomo, NEC Electronics and Nokia. This situation is similar to ST-Ericsson's, which also has three different 3G modem IP sources, EMP, NXP and Nokia. It appears that Renesas will use Nokia's 3G modem technology to compete for design-wins outside Japan. The combined entity of Renesas and NEC Electronics now boasts Fujitsu, Sharp, NEC, Sony Ericsson and Panasonic as its baseband customers . Renesas' expansion into the global baseband market would increase competition in the marketplace.

This move comes at a time when the 3G market is growing, accounting for close to one third of global cellular baseband revenues in 2009. Nokia's existing 3G chipset suppliers include Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Broadcom, ST-Ericsson and Icera. It is worth noting that the first Nokia 3G phones based on Qualcomm, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson's basebands are expected to debut in late 2010 or early 2011. Infineon is noticeably absent in this list although Infineon is a key GSM/GPRS/EDGE baseband supplier to Nokia.

We don't expect the first products based on this partnership to debut until late 2012, the time when Texas Instruments completes its baseband exit. In 2013 Nokia's 3G chipset suppliers list would include Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, Broadcom, Icera, Renesas and potentially Infineon and Intel. While Nokia can afford to have multiple suppliers considering its scale we could see some further acquisitions and mergers among these baseband suppliers.

Today’s announcement is likely to affect several companies...

• ST-Ericsson: ST-E will probably be worst hit by this announcement as it brings into doubt the strong relationship ST-E has had with Nokia over the past 3 years. ST-E has spent the last couple of years consolidating the 3G technologies it acquired from EMP and NXP with Nokia's 3G IP into its flagship processor the U8500 which is expected to appear in handsets at the end of 2010. Nokia will obviously be working with Renesas in future HSPA/LTE projects, thus potentially diluting the relationship with ST-E.

• Qualcomm: Qualcomm has enjoyed a much more positive relationship with Nokia during 2009/2010 since the companies resolved their long-standing IPR legal battles. Qualcomm is expected to supply chipsets to Nokia for its upcoming W-CDMA/LTE products. Nokia's stronger relationship with Renesas may now affect that.

• Infineon: Why did Nokia not choose Infineon? Nokia and Infineon already have a close relationship around LTE RF transceivers, but Nokia may have considered Infineon's expertise in HSPA and LTE modems to be too weak.

• NTT docomo: Renesas currently licenses 3G modem IP from NTT docomo for use in its SH-Mobile G processors which are desgined into handsets from Sharp and Fujitsu. Renesas' strong relationship with Nokia now makes it more likely that Renesas will use NTT docomo's IP for products aimed at the Japanese market, and will employ Nokia's HSPA/LTE IP in new chipsets for us in Nokia handsets. It will also allow Renesas to expand its client base beyond Japanese waters.

We have just finished up our Q4 2009 update to our baseband market share model. This gives us full year 2009 market share as well. It's the combined work of myself, Chris Taylor and Stuart Robinson with support from our wireless service colleagues. Cellular baseband market revenues reached $11.04 billion in 2009, down about 0.7% from 2008. In 2009, the cellular baseband market faced ASP challenges due to the global economic recession and increased competition in the market.

Here are some highlights based on the data from Strategy Analytics Baseband Quarterly Metrics service module:

* Qualcomm led the the market with close to 40% share of total global baseband revenues in 2009. Qualcomm improved its revenue share in both the CDMA and W-CDMA markets.

* Despite being absent in the important W-CDMA market, MediaTek managed second position in terms of baseband revenue share in 2009. Strategy Analytics estimates that the W-CDMA market represented close to one third of total cellular baseband revenues in 2009. MediaTek is expected to take a minor W-CDMA share in 2010 with its new W-CDMA baseband processor, MT6268.

* ST-Ericsson had a difficult year in 2009 as the company continued to restructure its product lines and also lost share at its important tier-1 handset OEM customers. TD-SCDMA was the only bright spot for ST-Ericsson.

* Both Infineon and Broadcom benefitted from multi-sourcing strategies at tier-1 handset OEMs which significantly improved their baseband revenues in 2009. Both companies are expected to make further gains in 2010 by expanding at their respective customers.

* Marvell had just 1.4% share of baseband revenues in 2009 but is expected to play an important role in the Chinese TD-SCDMA baseband market with its highly integrated TD-SCDMA baseband processor, Pantheon 920.

Strategy Analytics provisionally estimates that total global cellular baseband revenues reached $2.8 billion in Q1 2010. Looking forward to the end of 2010, new radio technologies (LTE, TD-SCDMA), multi-sourcing strategies and mobile broadband will provide growth opportunities for baseband processor vendors.

- Sravan Kundojjala

Intel is said to be in talks with Infineon to buy latter's wireless chip business unit. Of course this not the first time we heard about Infineon's wireless chip division rumors. Previously Samsung, NXP and ST Micro were also reported as potential buyers of Infineon's wireless chip business.

Previously Intel invested in the wireless handset chip business but divested it to Marvell. That time Intel was more focused on the application processor and was less focused on the baseband processor. So what's changed? Strategy Analytics believes that the growth in the mobile broadband is a key factor and Intel definitely needs a modem know-how to participate in this market. Intel is a key player in the WiMax market but lacks 3G and LTE baseband technology. Currently the company ships 3rd party modems in its Atom chipsets but in the long-term it would be beneficial to own modem technology to integrate it in its future Atom CPUs. Last year Intel acquired Freescale's France-based wireless operations and also licensed 3G / HSPA modem technology from Nokia.

Strategy Analytics believes that Infineon could be a good partner to companies looking for RF expertise and baseband customer relationships. Infineon's wireless business looks well settled after the company divested its Qimonda stake.

Here are some quick facts about Infineon's wireless business based on Strategy Analytics data.

* Infineon's wireless chip revenues represented close to 30% of its total revenues in calendar year 2009 and 25 percent in Q1-2010.

* Infineon's wireless chip products include basebands, RF transceivers, power management ICs, connectivity ICs (Bluetooth, GPS, and WLAN) and platform solutions.

* Infineon's baseband revenues represented close to 53% of its wireless chip revenues in 2009. * The company has baseband / RF customer relationships with almost all of the top-10 handset OEMs.

* Infineon ranked fourth with 11% unit shipment share in the $11.0 billion cellular baseband market in 2009.

* Infineon's wireless business has been profitable for the last four consecutive quarters. The company had just 2.5% operating margin in its wireless business in 2009.

* Despite its impressive baseband and RF product portfolio, the company currently lacks stand-alone application processors. It remains to be seen whether Infineon will go it alone or partner with Intel. We believe that it would cost $3-$5 billion for Intel to acquire Infineon's wireless business.

- Sravan Kundojjala

The number of mobile operating systems just keeps getting bigger and to our count close to ten platforms are now competing in this space. They include Symbian, Android, iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS, WebOS, MeeGo, bada, Windows Mobile, LiMo Foundation-compliant platforms, Brew Mobile Platform and Linux variants. The question that obviously comes to everyone's mind is who will win in this mobile software platform market.

There are some interesting angles to think about this.

• Can the smartphone market size accommodate this many platforms?

• Do consumers care about operating systems?

• Is it a zero-sum game or can there be a more than one winner?

• Everyone is talking about carriers becoming dumb pipes but what about handset OEMs? Will Google and Microsoft make handset OEMs as dumb pipes or add value?

• Should every handset vendor build their own OS? Can they cope with incremental mobile OS R&D costs?

• Can horizontal and vertical business models co-exist in the mobile industry?

• Is there enough developer support to address every OS?

• How many platforms operators can support?

We think R&D capabilities, scale, brand, and strong partner and developer ecosystem are necessary ingredients to sustain a long-term smartphone OS and only few of the above mentioned platforms check most of the boxes. Strategy Analytics estimates that smartphone OS vendors currently spend close to $100-$200 million on R&D on average and this is expected to grow incrementally.

Nokia (Symbian and MeeGo): 2010 will be remembered as a software transition year for Nokia and 2011 will see a settled software platform strategy with both Symbian and MeeGo (Maemo) getting much waited Qt UI and app frameworks. Nokia has a unique software strategy and is the only vertical vendor who is open sourcing its proprietary platforms. Nokia already has scale, brand, and R&D capabilities and if the company can excite the developer community and consumers with Qt then it should keep its smartphone lead for a long time to come. Nokia is well positioned to democratize the iPhone and BlackBerry experience to the masses. Nokia's software transition will be watched closely as competitors becoming stronger.

Microsoft: We believe Microsoft can not afford to lose in the mobile platform market given its synergistic importance to its other businesses and Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7 Series) announcement just reiterates that. It remains to be seen how WP7 Series platform will fare in terms of price points, hardware requirements, OEM support, developer and consumer reaction which can decide whether Microsoft can get the scale that is required to sustain a long-term smartphone OS. Microsoft will face a strong challenge from Google as both companies are targeting the same OEMs. Microsoft may position older Windows Mobile versions for low-end smartphone market but it remains to be seen how OEMs will react given more appealing nature of WP7 Series platform.

Android: Google and its partners executed very well so far and 2010 could be the Year of Android. Unlike Microsoft's WP7 Series platform, Android can also run on low-end chipsets which can increase its addressable market. Android and Symbian are the only mobile OSs that are targeting mass-market smartphone segment currently. This gives edge to Android to gain scale as handset OEMs push Android to feature phones. However some key risks like fragmentation and future Google moves that may cause friction to OEMs and operators will be watched closely. We also believe that the expanding size of the smartphone market should create enough opportunity for horizontal software platform players as Google and Microsoft currently lack high volume handset customers.

BlackBerry OS: RIM continued to gain with its market leading "Push" technology and security features. However, its web browsing and touch screen experience needs to be addressed. RIM already trying to fix the web browsing problem with new WebKit-based browser but touchscreens remain a challenge.

iPhone OS: Apple continues to win mindshare from developers and consumers alike and is well positioned to be a long-term player in the smartphone OS market. Apple's web browser is equally capable even if the trend shifts to web applications in the future. Apple may come under pressure from Android and resurgent Microsoft in the future but the growing size of the smartphone market should give enough room for iPhone OS to grow.

LiMo Foundation: Being a middleware platform and because of its governance structure, the LiMo Foundation currently lacks a direct relation with the developer community and currently depends on its operator partners for ecosystem. 52 LiMo-compliant handsets have been announced so far and 24 major global carriers are members of the Foundation. We believe that the LiMo Foundation's middleware platform is technically closer to Nokia's MeeGo and it remains to be seen how the Foundation will pursue its strategy given global OEMs are currently choosing Android.

Palm's WebOS: Despite seeming to have one of the best mobile platforms, Palm's limited geographical reach, and limited R&D budget could prevent the company from scaling as much as its competitors Nokia and Apple. Palm's lack of brand-awareness outside North America is not helping the matters. We believe Palm's lack of scale could hurt it in the future as its competitors become even stronger.

Samsung bada: Samsung bada's definition and market positioning remains still subjective given its kernel-configurable nature. It remains to be seen how Samsung's bada will keep pace with Android, iPhone OS, Symbian and others. Like Android and Symbian Samsung's bada also expected to target mass-market smartphones.

Qualcomm BREW Mobile Platform (BMP): We believe Qualcomm is positioning BREW as a low-end smartphone platform but it will face a stiff challenge from Android and Symbian as they are also trying to address the feature phone market. Qualcomm's BMP is also not supported by other chipset vendors but Qualcomm is expected to leverage its existing relations with operators and handset OEMs.

Despite the desire of OEMs to control their platforms, we continue to believe that the growing R&D costs to develop a smartphone OS and ecosystem around it could potentially force them to consolidate their efforts around licensable operating systems while also building OS-agnostic differentiating layers on top of that. Examples include Nokia (Qt / OVI), Motorola (Moto Blur), Sony Ericsson (UX), HTC (Sense UI), Samsung (TouchWiz) and LG (S-Class).

Strategy Analytics Exclusive Presentations at MWC 2010

Strategy Analytics is delighted to announce our presence at Mobile World Congress, the premier event for the wireless industry. We will be hosting our annual exclusive breakfast presentations, and invite you to attend one of our sessions that will showcase our latest research into the dynamics of the wireless market. This invitation-only breakfast event will provide insights into the critical threats and opportunities facing the wireless industry in 2010.

Mobile Broadband Traffic, Revenue & New Connected Devices  

Date

Tuesday 16th and Wednesday 17th February 2010*

Location

Expo Hotel, Calle Mallorca 1-23, Barcelona (same as last year)

(10min walking distance from the Fira de Barcelona where the MWC is taking place)

Registration Breakfast

08:00

Session 08:30 - 10:00

* Please note that this year the sessions on the two days will be identical, giving you the choice to select the more convenient time for you.

Managing the Traffic: Revenue Imbalance Notebooks/Netbooks, Feature Phones, Smart phones & Other Connected Devices

• Presentation One: A brave new world of connected devices. Which devices? Which OS? Which Brands for connected netbooks, notebooks, MIDs, ebooks?
• Presentation Two: The future of Apps: On/Off Portal & Managing the Tsunami of choices facing consumers
• Presentation Three: Managing the traffic explosion from over 1.3B broadband accounts
• SpecTRAX Global Handset Specification Database Demonstration

Each presentation is a unique opportunity to hear an objective market view from some of our senior analysts. Our events are free of charge but as we have limited space we ask you to register in advance by going to our website at: www.strategyanalytics.com/MWC2010.html

Please remember to indicate on which date you would like to attend. Please also note that copies of our presentation will only be made available to attendees and clients.

You will have the opportunity to meet our analysts after each presentation and/or can arrange a separate meeting during the Congress. Please feel free to forward this invitation to any of your colleagues if you think they would be interested.

If you are not going to be in Barcelona or if the timing is inconvenient, we would be happy to meet you at another time, just let us know! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us, otherwise we look forward to seeing you at the MWC in Barcelona!