Evolution of wireless market and emerging trends: Qualcomm

Matt Grob, SVP, corporate R&D, Qualcomm.

At the ISA CXO Conclave, Matt Grob, SVP, corporate R&D, Qualcomm, said that the company is a world leader in next-generation mobile technologies. It is celebrating 25 years of driving the evolution of wireless communications. It is making wireless more personal, affordable and accessible to people everywhere. Qualcomm is also the world’s largest fabless semiconductor company, #1 in wireless, and #9 in semiconductors.

Qualcomm’s unique business model is to be a technology enabler for the entire mobile value chain. It has continued strategic R&D investments, totalling more than $15.4 billion in 2010.

Industry trends
The 2G to 3G migration is currently taking place, with over 3.1 billion 3G subscriptions likely in 2015.  As for the emerging region growth, China leads with 640 percent, followed by Latin America at 465 percent and India at 168 percent, respectively.

Qualcomm is also said to be enabling the mobile broadband in India with 3G and LTE. Besides growing the LTE TDD ecosystem in region, it is building partnerships for long-term strategy and establishing 3G/LTE as best technology path for operators. Qualcomm is also driving the device evolution and growing the market by creating more choices for operators and consumers. It is developing low-cost 3G handsets for emerging markets using 1+ GHz mobile processors and supporting multiple popular OS.

The smartphone industry momentum has ensured that the ecosystem is benefitting from and driving growth. There has been as much as >25 percent YoY data revenue growth from leading operators. OEMs have launched 100+ new smartphones in the first half of CY 2010. The total mobile apps downloads from developers is likely to move up from 7 billion in 2009 to 50 billion by 2012.

Round-up 2010: Best of electronics, telecom and technology

Year 2010 has been a good year for the global electronics industry, rather, the technology industry, coming right after a couple of years of recession. Well, it is time to look back on 2010 and see the good, bad and ugly sides, if any, of electronics, telecom and technology.

Presenting my list of top posts for 2010 from these three segments.

ELECTRONICS

Electronics for energy efficient powertrain

Photonics rocks in India @ APW 2010, Cochin!

Plastic Logic’s QUE proReader looks to mean business!

Growing Indian power electronics market provides host of opportunities

Philips focuses on how interoperability, content sharing drive CE devices!

Apple never ceases to amaze!

Is this a war of tablets, or Apple OS vs. Google Android?

India needs to become major hardware player!

Roundup of day 2 @ Electronica India 2010

Strategic roadmap for electronics enabling energy efficient usage: Venkat Rajaraman, Su-Kam

NI stresses on innovation, launches LabVIEW 2010!

What’s Farnell (element14) up to? And, semicon equipment bubble burst? Whoa!!

Bluetooth set as short range wireless standard for smart energy!

View 3D TV, without glasses, today!

Indian medical electronics equipment industry to grow at 17 percent CAGR over next five years: ISA

Top 10 electronics industry trends for 2011

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LTE will see larger deployments, higher volumes than WiMAX!

LTE should benefit from WiMAX beachhead!

Context-aware traffic mediation software could help telcos manage data tsunami: Openwave

Mobile WiMAX deployment and migration/upgrade strategies

Upgrade to WiMAX 2 uncertain as TD-LTE gains in momentum!

Tejas celebrates 10 years with new products for 3G/BWA backhaul

Focus on gyroscopes for mobile phone apps: Yole

Bluetooth low energy should contribute to WSN via remote monitoring

INSIDE Contactless unveils SecuRead NFC solution for mobile handset market

How are femtocells enhancing CDMA networks?

Top 10 telecom industry trends for 2011

TECHNOLOGY

Symantec’s Internet threat security report on India has few surprises!

Epic — first ever web browser for India, from India!

Norton cybercrime report: Time to take back your Internet from cybercriminals!

NComputing bets big on desktop virtualization

Brocade launches VDX switches for virtualized, cloud-optimized data centers

It isn’t an easy job tracking so many different segments! 🙂 I will try and do better than this next year!

Best wishes for a very, very happy and prosperous 2011! 🙂

How are femtocells enhancing CDMA networks?

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) and Femto Forum recently hosted a discussion on ‘How Femtocells are Enhancing CDMA Networks.”

James Person, COO, CDG was the moderator, while the panelists were Andy Germano, vice chairman, Femto Forum, Josh Adelson, director, Product Marketing, Airvana, and Sameer Lalwani, staff manager, Technology Valuation, Qualcomm.

Femto market update

Femto Forum

Presenting a market update on femtos for CDMA, Andy Germano, vice chairman, Femto Forum, said femtocells have arrived and are shaping up into a key tool for mobile broadband service delivery.

There are 58 operators covering over 1.5 billion mobile subscribers – 33 percent of the global total. There are also 77 providers of femtocell technology covering all aspects of the ecosystem.

He highlighted some critical industry data points. For instance, the O2 network has seen an 18-fold increase in data carried over the network last year. Next, wireless data traffic on the AT&T network has grown more than 5,000 percent over the past three years.

So, why are people deploying femtocells? What’s driving growth? Naturally, the explosion of Internet connected devices — iPads, iPhones, and the like, are driving growth. There has been an exponential growth of mobile data traffic as well. Further, more than 80 percent of the traffic is indoors, and very little percentage of the traffic is mobile.

A femtocell is a simple, low cost, easy-to-install cellular access point for homes (and offices and metro areas). It is able to deliver fast, reliable service to standard phones over licensed spectrum. Further, femtocell is supported in 3G and next-generation standards by 3GPP, 3GPP2, WiMAX Forum, Broadband Forum, etc.

The shape of mobile networks has changed as well. As a data point, the US earlier had 200,000 macrocell sites. Today, the number of femtocells is greater than the number of macrocells — 350,000 femtocell sites as against 256,000 macrocell sites.

4G RAN status and trends: Vendors search for winning strategy

Maravedis 4G organized a webinar on 4G RAN (radio access network) market status and trends, moderated by Adlane Fellah, research director, Maravedis. The speakers were Chad Pralle, analyst partner, and Robert Syputa, senior analyst and advisor, both from Maravedis.

According to Pralle, data usage explosion has been happening due to new devices and applications, leading to order of magnitude growth in network elements, which creates opportunities in flexibilty addition and opex reduction.

Syputa pointed out that vendors are searching for a winning strategy in a shifting industry as integrated network services fuel sales and consolidation.

More details in a while.

Mobile WiMAX deployment and migration/upgrade strategies

This week, I had the pleasure of attending a Maravedis seminar on Mobile WiMAX Deployment and Migration/Upgrade Strategies, sponsored by Aviat Networks. Thanks a lot to Maravedis for providing me this opportunity.

Adlane Fellah of Maravedis provided a general overview of the mobile WiMax scenario, while Robert Syputa of Maravedis touched upon the evolving technology and market landscape. Later, Jonathan Jaeger, WiMAX Solutions Marketing, at Aviat Networks discussed the mobile WiMAX deployment and migration/upgrade strategies.

Giving a general overview, Adlane Fellah said that the global WiMAX industry in 2009 was as follows: the total WiMAX market size $1.36 billion. About 5 million WiMAX chipsets were shipped — +332 percent growth Y-o-Y. Also, 3.5 million new WiMAX CPEs were deployed. The WiMAX base station sectors –10.9 percent. However, the end-users want broadband wireless now, while the operators are confused by future evolution.

Key trends in LTE and WiMAX

Looking at the LTE and WiMAX key trends from 4Ggear report, specifically, for WiMAX chipsets, vendors have been offering differentiated chipsets to address the emerged markets. Also, there has been aggressive chipset pricing: higher volume and optimized platforms.

As for LTE chipsets, the leading chipset vendors include Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson and Nokia. The early solutions support LTE only. However, it is believed that the early suppliers may not be the long term winners.

Coming to WiMAX devices, we have seen diversified deployments of low cost CPEs, dual-mode USB dongles, and smartphones, etc. As for LTE devices, demonstrators = single-mode followed by dual-mode USB dongles. With regard to 4G equipment, WiMAX has clearly established a beachhead for technological progress, and LTE will surely benefit from it.

Context-aware traffic mediation software could help telcos manage data tsunami: Openwave

Given the rising (and no end in sight) surge  in demand for mobile content and data services, mobile network service providers are facing the challenge of effectively managing exponential growth in data traffic. Service providers must also find ways to maximize bandwidth without sacrificing end user experience.

Anand Chandrasekaran, director of Product Management, Openwave.

In conjunction with the Mobile Marketing Association Forum (MMA Forum) APAC event held this April 13-15, I had the opportunity to interact with Anand Chandrasekaran, director of Product Management, Openwave Systems Inc., which also did a global launch of it product — the Analytics Express at the event.

Managing data traffic challenges
Despite claims of vendors to have solved growing data traffic challenges, those still remain. How can Openwave really help manage this?

According to Anand Chandrasekaran, a fundamental shift has occurred in the industry. He said: “The demand for mobile data that we planned for years ago is finally here – only it’s bigger than everyone predicted. The proliferation of new devices like the iPhone and HTC Incredible, along with vastly improved user experiences and unlimited data plans (to date), has caused a tremendous and unprecedented surge in mobile data demand – AT&T disclosed this year that 3 percent of its users consume 40 percent of its bandwidth resources. This increase in traffic and the competitive pressure to keep data plans flat are squeezing service providers’ margins.”

Now let us look at how service providers can tackle the bandwith issue. As per Chandrasekharan, until now, one approach has been to add network capacity through additional equipment CAPEX. Unfortunately, this strategy is expensive and provides only a short-term solution.

Not all service providers have the financial strength to simply throw money at the problem, nor does that guarantee a sustainable solution. Service providers need to take a more holistic approach in developing solutions that will maximize available bandwidth while being able to monetize this surge of mobile data traffic.

An effective way for mobile service providers to handle the approaching data tsunami is to deploy context-aware traffic mediation software that sits in the data path, empowering them with a full view of their network, their subscribers’ profiles and the mobile devices in use. Context-aware traffic mediation enables service providers to monitor, manage and monetize traffic by creating and delivering smart policy-driven services.

According to him, Openwave’s Traffic Mediation solution runs on an open, IP-access platform that acts as a single control point for traffic management and provides services such as content adaptation, web and media optimization, network security, smart policy control and dynamic charging and campaigning.

LTE will see larger deployments, higher volumes than WiMAX!

Craig Miller, VP, Marketing & Business Development, Sequans Communications.

Late last month, I had the pleasure of attending a Maravedis seminar on 4Ggear: Equipment market update and chipset trends. It also included a market perspective from Sequans Communications, presented by Craig Miller, VP, Marketing & Business Development. This post will highlight Craig’s presentation. Maravedis’ post will follow thereafter.

4G trends: Device volumes and devices
During 2010, WiMAX device shipments are on pace to triple vs. 2009. The volume is well balanced in 2010. Key growth drivers include handset adoption, deployments in India as well as continued growth in US, Japan, SE Asia, and the MEA.

As for 4G devices, in the beginning (ca. 2006-2008), the device shipments were dominated by fixed broadband CPE. Today, the device ‘mix’ is shifting toward mobile broadband devices, netbooks and mass-market multimode handsets. Tomorrow, we shall witness more mass-market handsets, plus mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and other CE devices, as well as the emergence of M2M applications.

According to Miller, mass market prices are here now, enabled by low cost, high-integration chipsets.

Top 10 telecom predictions for 2010!

Well, well, well! We are close to the end of 2009! Nearly a year ago, I’d written about the top 10 telecom trends for 2009! Wonders of wonders — they’ve been bang on! Here’s what they were, according to me!

Top 10 predictions for 2009

1. WiMAX vs. LTE — when will this debate get over and done with?

2. Growth of 3G services in places where it hasn’t taken off or started!

3. IPTV — well, it needs to catch up and grow substantially.

4. More of GPS enabled devices as mobile navigation attempts to grow stronger.

5. Near field communications. A report elsewhere on the web talks also about NFC phones starting to roll out in Taiwan.

6. Further adoption of femtocells… hope the Forum does much, much more in 2009.

7. Embedded Internet devices.

8. Carrier Ethernet should gain steam.

9. More of mobile VAS and mobile Web

10. More of mobile OS wars.

What’s up for 2010? Top predictions

1. For one I don’t see anything radical happening in 2010. However, I must mention a particular technology — xMAX — a new technology that bypasses the traditional cell phone networks to bring lower calling costs to the market. This disruptive technology is likely to shake things up a bit! So, for 2010, I have hopes to see xMAX being more in the news.

2. Is there room to accommodate WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface) specification? It can be a trend, but well, the adoption would be more in the consumer electronics segment. Nevertheless, these are two new technologies I’ve heard about lately.

3. Yes, 4G/LTE has also been introduced by TeliaSonera — which claims to be the first in the world to do so. 2010 could well be its year.

4. Next, Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig), the organization advancing the adoption and widespread use of 60 GHz wireless technology worldwide, announced the completion of its unified wireless specification. Will it start to show steam in 2010? Remains to be seen!

5. There’s also the VoLGA (Voice over LTE via Generic Access). In fact, Kineto recently announced the industry’s first VoLGA access network controller.

So, I have five new things to report. If you have others, please share, and let’s try and see where 2010 will be headed.

The rest of the predictions (or trends) will likely a mixture and carryover of those in 2009 — the industry has been so boring this year! All I’ve heard is about mobile applications and application stores. Wonder what’s happened to good, old fashioned telecom stuff!

Right, Ive been requested  to list five other trends… Are they trends or facts? You decide!

6. More smartphones and mobile applications; also wireless netbooks. Am sure, you’ve heard of Intel’s announcement of next-generation Atom platform. If not, see the next post. Intel reportedly has been working closely with mobile operators and modem vendors to advance 3G capabilities in netbooks in established and emerging markets.

7. More growth of 3G services. And, I hope it finally sees the light of the day in India!

8. Perhaps,  more mobile application stores and integration of mobile social networking with other applications, including m-commerce, as Juniper Research also says.

9. NFC phones should start making an appearance.

10. More LTE networks (and also, WiMAX)… the debate continues!

Telecom enhances globalization in every possible way!

Is it any other way, apart from this? I was quite surprised on being asked whether telecom growth somehow blocked globalization! Quite the opposite!!

Take the Indian telecom industry for instance! Those who have followed the Indian telecom closely — right from the days of C-DoT developing 256-switch RAX, down to the introduction of mobile phones — after massive overbidding by folks such as HFCL in 1994, to the introduction of the Internet in India — on the eve of India’s independence day in 1994 — the growth of satellite communications in the country in the mid and late nineties — remember DAMA? — to the introduction of CDMA in the early 2000s, to the great proliferation of mobile phones that we now see around us!

Does any of this indicate anywhere that India has not been able to globalize, thanks to telecom?

When C-DoT had introduced RAX in the late 1980s, it really brought about a telecom revolution. Today, we don’t talk of C-DoT in the glowing terms that it really deserves. Who would have ever imagined that mobile phones would take off the way they have done now! And well, we just can’t survive without the email and the Internet!

Let’s trace the global telecom history from the late 1980s a bit more. When AMPS gave way to GSM, you had the feature called roaming! People wondered what they would do with this feature? Today, we complain, if we can’t roam!

ARIB, Japan, had visited India in early 1994, to try and sell PHS. In those days, PHS and DECT were the hot WiLL technologies. Later, Japan, thanks to Takeshi Natsuno and NTT DoCoMo, saw the advent of i-mode, and well, it indicated the first signs of what mobile Internet would really do!

Pages and pages were written, screaming, “WAP is CRAP”! Now, all phones are WAP enabled and no one says a word! We love to surf on the mobile phone now, isn’t it? What about all those MMS messages, including the sleazy ones? You can do mobile blogging now, can’t you? Also, update your Twitter!

In optical networking, in the early nineties, PDH gave way to SDH! We later saw the advent of DWDM and also VCSELs. With the advent of 3G in the late nineties, we discovered W-CDMA. China came up with TD-SCDMA, another 3G technology. For some time, LAS-CDMA tried to make its mark, then I don’t know what happened to it!

How many of you know that a simple SMS led to the famous second people power revolution in the Phillipines in early 2001, a peaceful revolution that overthrew Philippine President Joseph (Erap) Estrada!

Why, I still remember, during a spot survey at a Frost & Sullivan’s telecom conference in Singapore in 2001, I was one among the three who used the mobile phone to check my Yahoo mails. I received such stares! Today, we can’t stop talking about Blackberry and iPhone! In Hong Kong, in the early 2000s, I used my Siemens WAP phone to locate Indian restaurants! When Nokia added GPS via HS-CSD in Hong Kong’s Citybus in 2000, it was sensational! Today, we talk about LBS and GPS, and all that!

I can go on and on with such anecdotes! If there was no telecom, the world would not have progressed in the manner it has done now. Still having doubts?