Renesas Mobile inaugurates R&D centre in Bangalore

Renesas Mobile Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corp., announced the inauguration of its research and development (R&D) centre in Bangalore, India which develops 2G, 3G and 4G modem technologies.

(L-R): Heikki Tenhunen, senior VP, Alan Frederiksen, MD, Renesas Mobile India, Shinichi Yoshioka, senior executive VP and COO, and Jean-Marie Rolland, CTO and executive VP, Sales and Marketing.

Renesas Mobile was established on December 1, 2010 as a 100 percent subsidiary company of Renesas Electronics. As part of the Renesas group, it has the support of the world’s largest embedded microcontroller player in the semiconductor world. Renesas Mobile focuses on platforms for smart phones, feature phones, car infotainment and embedded connected devices enabling people to stay connected in the cloud computing era.

The company integrates the former Mobile Multimedia Business Unit of Renesas with the former Nokia Wireless Modem Business Unit. The Nokia Wireless Modem Business Unit has been acquired by Renesas Electronics as announced on July 1st, 2010.

Introducing Renesas Mobile Corp., Heikki Tenhunen, senior VP, said that Renesas Mobile offers advanced and innovative products and services for mobile phones, car infotainment solutions, consumer electronics and industrial applications.

The company’s mission is to develop, productize and deliver advanced triple- and dual-mode communication centric semicon chipsets and platforms based on chipsets to provide innovative solutions and drive mew oppurtunities for customers. Renesas Mobile aims to be a world leader in mobile platforms by evolving its proven modem, application processor and SoCs, and associated services via its global business channel.

The Renesas-Nokia combine has since gone on to make unrivalled connected experiences a reality — by way of powerful multi-tasking, rich multimedia, newly emerging technologies — such as cloud computing, 3D, augmented reality, etc., PC like Internet experience, smaller form factor and longer battery life, and remain always connected!

Renesas’ mobile expertise includes the following:
* Excellent device experience, supporting over 400 mobile handsets to date;
* Key components verified at ‘system‘ level quality for platform release;
* Complete reference design easy to start application development;
* Market proven multimedia software package and multiple OpenOS integration support;
* Competitive SoC implementation performance; over 470 mn transistors in mobile LSI (G4);
* Leading-edge process (45nm, 28nm, 22nm) balancing own fab and partners (TSMC, etc.).

Indian semicon market update shows 28.3 percent growth in 2010!

I am a bit amused to read the latest key findings on the Indian semiconductor market from ISA-Frost & Sullivan. Never mind!

Source: ISA-Frost

The report concludes that products demonstrating potential for explosive growth include –mobile devices, telecom base stations, LCD TV, STB, EMS, CFL, LED lights and smart cards and products with low MI – notebooks, tablets, STBs routers, digital cameras, etc. need to be given preferential treatment for indigenous manufacturing.

India is becoming the hub for small car manufacturing. Incentives and encouragement need to be provided for enhancing automotive component manufacturing in the country to keep pace with automobile industry growth.

Products enabling energy efficiency need to be incentivized through tax breaks for R&D and product development thereby promoting indigenous manufacturing. Electronics and semiconductor MI stagnate at 50 percent;  the TAM growth is unlikely to match the TM growth in the near future! Continuing status quo — the electronics import bill to surpass crude import bill by 2020-21.

The need of the hour is a focused mission for local electronics manufacturing promotion. A National Electronics Development Plan is also required. As is required an electronics policy for ecosystem development; subsidies for manufacturing; funds for R&D; extended tax breaks; hardware development parks.

Otherwise, the report suggests that India’s semiconductor market grew by a phenomenal 28.3 percent in 2010.

Indian semicon market: Source: ISA-Frost

The global semiconductor market’s cyclical trends has minimal impact on India. Mobile devices, telecom and IT/ OA contributed 82 percent to semiconductor TM in 2010.

Local manufacturing of telecom equipment by OEMs and EMS companies to propel related semiconductor consumption by a massive 50 percent during 2010 to 2012. Influenced by regulatory norms and sharpening competition, automotive segment to account for the highest growth in semiconductor demand at 31 percent from 2010 to 2012.

Sustained gulf between the semiconductor TM and TAM from 2010-2012 highlight the urgency to promote local manufacturing to drive higher growth in TAM.

The Total Semiconductor Market (TM) revenues are poised to grow from $6.55 billion in 2010to $9.86 billion in 2012. The market is expected to witness a CAGR of 22.7 percent.

During the corresponding period, the Total Semiconductor Available Market (TAM) revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.3 percent reaching revenues of $4.71 billion in 2012from $3.14 billion in 2010. Mobile devices and telecom are the key contributors to TAM while mobile devices and IT/ OA are the key contributors to TM.

Being an indispensable component in a wide range of products, the memory market leads the contribution to semiconductor revenues with 23.4 percent and 20.1 percent of TM and TAM, respectively.

One hopes that all of this is indeed correct, and the Indian semiconductor industry continues to grow in future!

Study on semiconductor design, embedded software and services industry in India

The India Semiconductor Association (ISA) has released a study on semiconductor design, embedded software and services industry, along with Ernst & Young.

According to the report, the key challenges constraining the growth of the semiconductor design industry are summarized under five major issues:
i) Quality, availability and maturity of talent.
ii) Absence of a startup and SME ecosystem.
iii) Lack of a semiconductor ecosystem.
iv) Lack of adequate infrastructure, policies and implementable incentives.
v) External issues such as competition from Asian countries and protectionist policies by some countries.

The report then goes on to tackle each one of these issues in detail under elaborate recommendations.

These recommendations require the concerted and co-ordinated efforts by the government, industry and academia to aid India reach the next level of growth and achieve the specific goals envisaged for the industry. The goals are:

Goal 1: Maintain leadership in semiconductor design by incubating 50 fabless semiconductor companies, each with the potential to grow to $200 million in annual revenues by 2020.

Goal 2: Build on India’s favorable intellectual property protection image and make it among the top 5 destinations for intellectual property creation in the semiconductor design industry.

Goal 3: Capitalize on indigenous demand in strategic sectors to provide impetus to the Indian fabless semiconductor industry.

Goal 4: Sustain and nurture high-class semiconductor design manpower at a growth rate of 20 percent year-on-year to double its current output levels to reach a workforce size of 400,000 in the next five years.

The very first goal itself is a bit far fetched, but not that it can’t be achieved. To reach anywhere close to this goal, a concerted all round effort would be required from all in the industry. The fourth goal would have been better as the first goal, but never mind.

The second goal looks fine, but it is the third goal that seems a bit far off. This is April 2011, and still, there are talks about capitalizing on the indigenous demand in strategic sectors in order to provide impetus to the Indian fabless semiconductor industry?

I recall a discussion in mid-2005 where an industry expert mentioned that fabless was the way forward for the Indian industry! Between then and now, fabs were supposed to come up, but they failed. Nevertheless, one must not give up hope!

ST focuses on four key growth areas

Carlo Bozotti, president and CEO, STMicroelectronics.

According to Carlo Bozotti, president and CEO of STMicroelectronics, there are four key growth areas for the company:
* Smart meters and energy saving.
* Smart consumer devices.
* Trust and data security.
* Healthcare and well being.

Bozotti was speaking at the STMicroelectronics’ media roundtable held this evening at the Greater Noida, India office.

Year 2010 goes down in ST’s history as a year of records. Both ACCI and IMS surpassed the $1 billion mark in quarterly revenue. Year 2010 was also a year of recovery — with ST achieving $1,3 billion revenue and a net operational cashflow of $961 million. ST also improved its net financial position to $1.7 billion.

In 2011, ST promises to expand and continue to grow its customer base. This year, ST predicts that the global semicon industry will grow 5-8 percent.

ST forsees its second major block of growth in manufacturing. It has aggressive ramp-up planned in application areas, such as:
* MEMS.
* Smart power automotive field.
* New platforms and solutions in smartphones and tablets.

Even ST-Ericsson, which was in restructuring mode, is now secure. This year, said Bozotti, it will be a year of transition from old, legacy products to new.

The last priority is to achieve 3D SoCs, complex MCUs and twin MEMS. Bozotti noted that the company plans to combine accelerometer and gyroscope in a single application. It will also add innovative solutions to smartphones and tablets.

As for R&D, Bozotti claimed that the company will remain committed. “We strongly commit to R&D in both good and bad times,” he noted.

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! 🙂

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

First, I must thank my friend, Arnob Roy, president-engineering, Tejas Networks, for sharing the details of Tejas celebrating 10 years of telecom product innovation in India. Tejas has been leading the Indian high-tech industry evolution for the last decade. It has played a significant role as bandwidth creators for telecom services in India.

I still remember feeling quite thrilled — back in early 2001 — when I first passed by Tejas’ office in Bangalore, even more so as I’d just met Sycamore Networks at the ITU Telecom Asia 2000 (in early December) in Hong Kong, when I was Editor, Global Sources Telecom Products.

Last week, Tejas completed a decade of telecom product innovation, and celebrated the event by announcing new products for 3G/BWA backhaul, besides having its chairman, Dr. Gururaj (Desh) Deshpande, here for the event.

In case you are unaware, last month, Dr. Deshpande was appointed as the co-chairman of US President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He will support President Obama’s innovation strategy by helping to develop policies that foster entrepreneurship, create jobs, and drive economic growth.  He is a serial entrepreneur, and founder or mentor to many for-profit companies, such as Cascade, Sycamore, Tejas, Airvana, and so on.

Tejas in India

Sanjay Nayak, CEO & MD, Tejas.

Outlining Tejas’ success in India, Sanjay Nayak, CEO and MD, said the company had reached the top-10 spot in its segment globally, besides being a leader in India-bandwidth enablers across all operators. Tejas has also achieved global success — it is used by operators in networks in over 50 countries, besides being the OEM product provider to many global equipment majors.

Tejas has also been developing technology leading products such as those enabling 3G/BWA transition. For those interested, the company has launched 10+ products from India over last five years. Also, 192,000 Tejas’ systems are lighting over 5 million km of optical fiber. The company has also seen profitable growth, wtih five-year CAGR of >65 percent (revenues of  Rs. 620 crore). It has 730 employees (in seven countries) with over 450 in R&D.

Infineon's wireless strategy focuses on low cost solutions and smartphones

Fairly recently, thanks to the great efforts of Infineon’s Abhinav Alok, I was able to meet up with Dr Matthias Ludwig, Head – Wireless for APAC and Infineon Korea and Peter Schaefer, VP & GM, Head – Microcontrollers, Infineon.

However, post the meeting, to my horror, I misplaced my notes and only managed to locate them last week. My apologies to Infineon for being late with this blog post.

I was able to discuss Infineon’s wireless strategy with Dr Ludwig and also managed a peek at Infineon’s range of microcontrollers during my discussion with Peter Schaefer. First, let’s have a look at the company’s wireless strategy.

Dr Matthias Ludwig said: “We are good in RF and baseband. There are about 1.5 billion RF transceivers out there globally, from Infineon.” He added that one third of the market falls in the low cost mobile phone segment.

Infineon’s wireless strategy is two fold — low cost solutions and the smartphone platform — where the company is focusing on the modem and the RF side, respectively. Infineon’s Android based smartphone platform uses an ARM 11 baseband. “Customers can come up with their own application processor,” Dr Ludwig said. “Our strategy gives us a lot of flexibility.”

He mentioned that Infineon receives a lot of requests from customers for smartphones at $100 solutions. “We believe that we can manage our single core Android platform in the $100 segment.”

Thanks to Dr Ludwig, I had a first hand experience of some of the smartphones that Infineon is currently working on. Actually, think about it! A $100 dollar (and even sub $100) smartphone may be just the thing Indians would love to have.

As for Infineon’s India strategy — part of the focus is on low cost. “We know that there is tough competition out there,” noted Dr. Ludwig. One other aspect that Infineon is focusing on is: how to develop and build an ecosystem in the country.

Of course, Infineon is also looking beyond the Indian market when it is developing solutions. In that respect, Dr Ludwig added that one of Infineon’s focus is to find the sweet spots that are not only of interest to India. “There is a certain drive to have low end products. Safety and reliability of the products are also important,” he concluded.

I will add a separate post on the conversation with Peter Schaefer, VP & GM, Head Microcontrollers, Infineon.

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.

Indian Microelectronics Academy (IMA) formed to build, nurture and grow start-ups!

Friends, it takes great pleasure to announce the formation of the Indian Microelectronics Academy (IMA), a brainchild of Cre8 Ventures, which was launched by Mentor Graphics UK Ltd in 2005 as an independent network. Cre8Ventures aims to help start-up electronic design companies achieve business success.

Carson Bradbury, director, Cre8ventures, spins off the Indian Microelectronics Academy!

The idea of the IMA was conceived and developed by Carson Bradbury, the mastermind behind the European Microelectronics Academy (EMA), who has helped this India chapter get off the ground. You can see him raising the salient points of the IMA to a select audience from the Indian microelectronics industry.

Carson also happens to be the director of Cre8Ventures, the initiative Mentor Graphics took back in 2003 to help the startups in Europe. During this period, Cre8Ventures has been able to help over 80 companies and create a healthy ecosystem for the startups.

On the IMA’s objective, Carson says: “It is to help enable a new breed of microelectronic companies that have the promise to become global by owning value chains. The strategy would be to establish new international communities whose tantalizing messages on the world stage is exploitation (US), execution (Asia) and innovation (Europe).”

As for the areas of focus, he adds that it will be “wherever there is a big unmet business need and the opportunity to own a value chain through microelectronics.” For details, visit http://www.indianmicroelectronicsacademy.com!

What will the IMA do for start-ups in India?
And, what will the IMA do for start-ups in India? In this regard, Carson says: “The IMA will uncover unmet business needs from big companies from Coca Cola to Tata and will solve the innovation gaps by creating/connecting start-ups and leveraging open innovation strategies from multi-national semiconductor companies.

“The IMA will help start-ups get to momentum through the experience, trust and influence of the high profile individuals which represent the IMA’s executive team and the contribution from industrialists (e.g. EDA, Foundry, IP, Assembly and Test, Software and Design Services) who’s ‘take’ is first mover advantage and who’s ‘give’ is risk sharing business models (e.g. spin-out, spin-in, IP donation/extraction).

“The IMA will then aim to take start-ups further down stream so when they get to Series A they will have triple A board rooms, markets defined, early adopter customers an first product/silicon in place.”

Now, I sincerely hope this is the story that the Indian semiconductor and electronics industry has, perhaps, been looking forward to! There is a pressing need to build, nurture and help start-ups to develop and grow. The IMA has the goal to make that happen! In that respect, this is your — the Indian microelectronics industry’s — story!

The IMA’s initial steps would be to actually start getting connected with the Indian startups who require immediate help and attention, and come out with its first success story, and more!

I also hope that the IMA can interest the other leading industry bodies in India to join hands and make this a very robust ecosystem that will serve the Indian industry in the years to come.

Why need an IMA?
So, why need an IMA in the first place? Well, the IMA has been formed in India with the objective of creating an ecosystem of bringing together all of the necessary pillars required to create successful startups and bridge the innovation gaps among the leading companies.

The idea is to also grow the GDP of the region based on a knowledge based economy. This is a proven concept, which worked for seven years in the form of Cre8Ventures in Europe. In 2010, Cre8Ventures first set up the EMA in Europe and now, the IMA in India!

Who’s involved in IMA?
Naturally, Carson Bradbury, the brain behind all of this, is heading the initiative!

The others in this team include Raghu Panicker, sales director, Mentor Graphics India, who plays the role of a non executive director in the Academy and brings the world class EDA tools required for the startups to the table.

Himanshu Rawal, account manager, Mentor Graphics India, will play the role of director, Cre8Ventures India. His charter in the Academy is to discuss and uncover the interests of the various startups, understand the innovation gaps of the leading companies and bring these in front of the Academy. On a personal note, many thanks to Himanshu for also providing valuable inputs for this post.

Yours truly has also been asked to join. I hope I can play a decent role in connecting the right dots together!

Calling all interested start-ups: to start a dialogue, please feel free to contact me — Pradeep Chakraborty — through this blog. You can also contact Himanshu Rawal at himanshu_rawal[at]mentor.com.

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.