Wireless Industry Analyst

With Nokia and InterDigital (IDCC) engaged in a prolonged legal battle over licensing issues, the title of this article is sure to raise more than a few eyebrows. I think that recent industry events make this an interesting but overlooked possibility. Here is why –

Recently, Signals Research Group published an independent performance report comparing HSDPA solutions from various vendors. The test results, coming as they did from a credible firm, surprised many by concluding that InterDigital(IDCC), Infineon (IFX) and Icera were the winners. I was not surprised though.

Over the past few months, I have extensively covered InterDigital and its SlimChip solution. The SlimChip’s advantage comes from its advanced baseband receivers with firm theoretical underpinnings. Much like Qualcomm, InterDigital has a strong systems team that designs the optimal system first and then seeks to make the cost-performance trade-off. The SlimChip is well-positioned to complement the market-leading applications processors such as TI’s OMAP to break into the smart-phone market. For more coverage on InterDigital, I will refer you to my earlier articles here, here and here.

Infineon is also not a surprising topper at least for two reasons. Firstly, I am betting that Infineon will be in the impending 3G iPhone. The Apple angle implies that Infineon has to match the former’s push for innovation with a high-performance, low power chipset. Secondly, Infineon has a very friendly alliance with InterDigital. The Infineon chipset uses InterDigital’s 3G stack. Besides, I suspect that InterDigital has provided substantial baseband IP for this chipset including the advanced receiver algorithms that have made SlimChip superior. You can read my iPhone suspicions here and here.

Icera is a Bristol-based startup which has raised over $100 million in venture funding till date. Its Livanto solution is the world’s first wireless soft modem. Along with the Adaptive Software solution, Livanto supports HSDPA,WDCMA, GSM and EDGE. The software solution implies that very high precision advanced algorithms can be programmed without spinning a new chip. This not only allows for extremely good performance, but also implies that the Icera chipset can handle any improvements in the standard or receiver algorithm. You can find earlier coverage on Icera here.

I had suggested earlier that an alliance with InterDigital will do TI a world of good. Watch out for Icera as well. Soft modem is the future. This company founded by Broadcom and ST Microelectronics founders already has a pioneer status and can come at a much cheaper price than InterDigital if TI wants quick 3G capability.

In summary, the three companies are not surprising winners, after all. But the test results have challenged Qualcomm’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – its baseband performance. Qualcomm, for the moment, can rely on its economy of scale, service and support to stay ahead. This may also be broken if, for example, TI throws its weight behind InterDigital or Icera.

[Long Qualcomm, InterDigital at the time of writing]

• Who is the GPS chip provider?
• Who provides bluetooth and WiFi capabilities for the phone? Is this a single-chip solution?
• Whose chip does the phone use for touch-screen controls?
  

As an open fan of Qualcomm's engineering leadership, I like to look at the Snapdragon platform as the panacea for all integration woes and perhaps the heart of the Nuviphone. Here is an excerpt from my July 07 integration article -

"Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform has 3G cellular capability along with GPS functionalities. Plans are on to incorporate WLAN and blue-tooth into this platform. The company is already pitching this as the ultimate dream-solution for any dream-phone. The idea is fairly clear, provide to the phone manufacturers, this all-in-all solution at a cost they cannot resist."
The diagram above seems to illustrate everything that QCOM's all-in-all chipset has to offer. What is more, this is a superset of features that the Nuviphone advertises. The QSD8250 platform supports HSDPA, is GPS, WiFi and bluetooth capable. The GPS and bluetooth will come from its Snaptrack and RFMD bluetooth acquisition respectively. I am, however, not sure if the WiFi capabilities will come from Airgo, or if it is using the mobile WLAN players to reduce the time-to-market. Besides, the platform has a 1 GHz ARM-based processor and a 600 MHz DSP processor that will together make the phone a true mean machine. The chipsets are already shipping to customers. HTC seems to be one of its customers.

As far as the Snapdragon matching the Nuviphone's needs, I do not have visibility into the OS requirements for Garmin. The Nuviphone runs on Garmin's proprietary OS. The literature suggests that the Snapdragon is customizable for Windows mobile and Linux. I am guessing that if need be, writing the drivers for a new OS may not be an issue for QCOM.

Well, that is just my wishful thinking for the moment. I want the Nuviphone to be a great phone and cannot think of a better partner than QCOM for the venture.

• LTE is not a GSM technology, it is rather an evolution of the GSM standard
• WCDMA/HSDPA that serve as the link between GSM and LTE is based on CDMA physical layer. In other words, the core over-the-air interface is similar in flavor to CDMA2000
• UMB is not CDMA-based, but is rather an evolution of the CDMA2000 standard. In fact UMB and LTE are based on the same underlying Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technology.
  
• This may be bad for UMB, but not entirely for QualComm.
  

• Irrespective of whether UMB or LTE, or for that matter, WiMax wins, at the end of the day, CDMA as a technology is on its way out and even QualComm knows this.
• Since the migration to UMB or LTE will have involved similar infra-structure overhauling, it makes sense for Verizon to go with LTE (I will elaborate on this in a subsequent article)

• The 3G version, as I have already mentioned, suffers from a costlier chip also. The average price per 3G chip is closer to $25 as against single digit numbers for the Infineon chip in the iPhone today. Besides, the royalty structure for 3G amounts to about 28% of the average selling price of the 3G phone. Apple typically keeps its cost constant for more features. This will imply reduced margins from iPhone V2
• The power consumption issue does open up the question of who the baseband supplier will be. Will it be QualComm (QCOM), which has made strides in power management since iPhone V1? Will it be Infineon that has been confirmed to be developing UMTS (3G) baseband chipsets for atleast 2 companies? And if so, where does the recent licensing deal between Apple and Interdigital (IDCC) fit in?
• Who will supply the A-GPS capability for the iPhone?
  
• Would iPhone V2 be HSDPA-enabled?
  

• The carriers are yet to monetize on the infra-structure they have built so far. So, even if they attempt to vigorously promote 4G, the investors are unlikely to authorize another 50 billion dollars for new OFDMA based infra-structure.
• 3G is just getting popular, especially in the U.S. For example, AT&T (T) is slowly adding cities to its WCDMA roll-out. 4G will have to wait since a lot of these carriers are thus committed to 3G.
• New carriers need to pick from the available candidates for core technology. Each is plagued by unique issues and the choice is thus not obvious. WiMax has mobility issues, UMB is solely QualComm's technology and the wireless value chain will be vary of this and infact want to avoid it.
• LTE has just been completed as a standard and there are reports that most stumbling blocks of the Physical layer have been ironed out. QualComm (QCOM) and Ericsson are the only companies developing prototypes. All others are either struggling with their HSDPA or HSUPA solutions and are not even close to HSPA+, leave alone LTE. Not many have the deep pockets to run parallel tracks like these two giants can afford to.
• Extensive field-testing has not been done with any of these technologies. Field testing, as many will agree, can spawn its own cycle of debug and development. And this will affect the availability of the devices even if the 700MHz spectrum and its winners are waiting with open hands.