Wireless Industry Analyst

The staff attorney assigned to the InterDigital-Samsung ITC dispute favored Samsung in his report. His position that there is no violation calls for rejecting InterDigital's proposal to ban disputed Samsung products in the US. InterDigital's stock took a 25% dip as the Street is now pessimistic about its prospects. As the drama unfolds, here is an attempt to even out public perception. Before you read on, however, please note that I am neither a legal expert nor a Wall Street analyst. So, take it for what it is, just an opinion.

Firstly, while the staff report is an unbiased third-party opinion on the case, it is still only one instrument for the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) to decide. The judge is yet to hear both companies' positions. The staff report is not binding on the judge. There is precedence in the past where the ALJ has acted against the staff recommendation. So, while InterDigital has lost some positioning in this case now, the staff recommendation is certainly not the end of the road for this ITC dispute.

Secondly, contrary to what I alluded to in my last post, an unfavorable decision by the ALJ will only reject the call to ban Samsung phones in the US. Besides, one theory is that a 'no violation' decision may be the result of the staff attorney finding that this is a licensing dispute that has to be amicably resolved between the parties without warranting a ban.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, InterDigital has many more things going for it beyond the ITC dispute. Most notably, the company has already licensed to Apple and RIMM, both of whom are battling it out in the smartphone market. It is also very likely to be a beneficiary of the 3G iPhone to be released shortly. Ironically enough, Samsung sources 3G chipsets for some of its designs from Infineon. These phones will hence use InterDigital's 3G protocol stack and, like the 3G iPhone, contribute per-unit royalties to the King of Prussia-based company. You can find more about InterDigital's products and strategies here and here.

Finally, for the curious minds who are wondering what will happen to InterDigital's valuation if the Samsung case goes against it, I will direct you to my February 2008 valuation post here. A nominal assumption on the total royalty money gave me a $75/share valuation then. You can look at the revenue impact of the royalty rate replete with graphs there.

In summary, I feel that the sell position taken by many investors is understandable. InterDigital is a volatile story stock and the ITC staff report did little to buttress investor confidence. On the other hand, a 25% drop seems unwarranted in the light of a) lack of enough information given that the case is still in its preliminary stages and b) many other developments to look forward to from InterDigital.

[PS: Thanks to all the readers who responded to my previous post]

[Disclosure: Long IDCC at the time of writing]

Disclaimer: All thoughts expressed by Vijay Nagarajan in his articles are his and do not necessarily reflect those of either Atheros Communications or TensorComm Inc.

InterDigital, the King of Prussia-based wireless company, saw its shares jump by about 5% last week when the S&P and Nasdaq were down by around 2%. The reason for this optimism was the news that InterDigital and Nokia have agreed to end two legal proceedings in the UK.

In July 2005, Nokia asked a London High Court declare InterDigital's intellectual property as non-essential to UMTS (3G standard encompassing WCDMA and HSDPA). InterDigital, in turn, filed a suit against Nokia in December 2006. The companies recently decided to drop these lawsuits. The terms of the agreement are unknown. Besides, the companies continue to be at loggerheads in front of the ITC in the US. While this settlement does not reflect a sudden friendliness or alliance between the two warring companies, it is certainly a good sign for both parties.

For Nokia, it means lesser distractions from its focus of retaining and growing its mobile market share and its fight to match new niche players like Apple. For InterDigital, ending the UK disputes quickly was becoming important. Its legal disputes with tier-one handset vendors were dragging their feet pulling down the company's intrinsic value with them.

I see the amicable end to the UK disputes also as a sign of more good news to come. For both companies, this is a good data point for their ITC-related licensing negotiations. If the companies can agree on the ITC litigation as well (which I presume will revolve around the exact 'per-unit royalty' that InterDigital will then collect from Nokia's 3G phones), the wireless IP-house will widen its 3G footprint. It will also carry this momentum forward into the ITC litigation/negotiation discussions with Samsung for more favorable results.

Like I have said before, I don't doubt that IDCC has important 3G IP. It is more a question of when and how much the industry is willing to pay for it. Maybe we will know many of these answers over the next few months. Earlier coverage on InterDigital can be found here, here and here.

For me, like for many other InterDigital investors, this week will answer some other questions to bring more good news. This Friday, I will watch out for the many 3G iPhone teardowns that will follow its world-wide release. If my analysis is right, we will see InterDigital's 3G protocol stack inside the new iPhone. IDCC is guaranteed per-unit royalty from Infineon for each of its 3G chipset sold. I will let you guesstimate what it means to InterDigital's revenue for the next few quarters!

[Long IDCC at the time of writing]

[Disclaimer: All thoughts expressed by Vijay Nagarajan in his articles are his and do not necessarily reflect those of either Atheros Communications or TensorComm Inc.]

The 3G iPhone is expected to launch soon at the WWDC. One of the primary component winners likely is Infineon. The company’s cellular chipset is expected to drive the iPhone. As we wait for the teardown, I was asked by a good friend how we would know if IDCC is in the iPhone. He specifically wanted me to address the issue with respect to the latest IFX 3G product announcements. Here is my take on it.

We are less than a week off from the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference 2008 (WWDC) in which the 3G iPhone is expected to make its debut. I have, over the past year, covered the 3G iPhone in great detail. As we head to the WWDC, I thought it will be nice to compile my iPhone predictions about some component suppliers. Take them for what they are - just predictions!

3G Baseband: Infineon will be at the heart of the iPhone. The Infineon 3G chip will have a software stack that is jointly developed with InterDigital. The King of Prussia-based InterDigital is also likely to have a good portion of the baseband IP if my guess is right. I am basing this last speculation on the performance of the IFX chipsets in recently conducted tests.Essentially, InterDigital will earn a per-chip royalty for the software stack and possibly for the baseband IP. For more details on the 3G baseband supplier analysis, I will direct you to my article here.

Application Processor: Samsung will perhaps continue to own this part. Marvell has an outside chance.

WLAN: For platform stability issues, I will bet on Marvell grabbing this socket again. Broadcom may spring a surprise with its WLAN-BT-FM integrated solution.

Bluetooth: If WLAN belongs to Marvell, CSR, which is in the current iPhone, will likely own the Bluetooth socket again.

GPS: The next generation will have GPS and it will likely belong to Broadcom. This was recently ratified by a GigaOm report.

Touchscreen: Broadcom

I cannot hypothesise on other components. But if I were to guess, I will bet on Apple retaining most existing suppliers. While I have been talking about these component suppliers for around a year now, some of these predictions may appear matter-of-fact to readers today. In any case, now that I have put it all in a list, let us see what my hit-rate is!

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 –

In my Texas Instruments (TXN) valuation series, I pointed out that the company did not have a strong 3G product strategy. I subsequently also discussed in detail the synergies that existed between InterDigital and TI. I had also noted that if not InterDigital, TI could consider Icera also as a viable option to buttress its 3G roadmap. Let us take a quick look at this possibility.

InterDigital announced its First Quarter 2008 results yesterday. The King of Prussia-based company beat analyst expectations this quarter, addressed the Nokia and Samsung litigations and also hinted about its 3G iPhone presence.

[Originally for Sramana Mitra's site]

The 3G iPhone rumors are getting more frequent by the day. We all know it will hit the market. It is just a question of when. I have, in the past, looked at the likely component vendors for the impending iPhone including Infineon and InterDigital. As requested by one of our readers, we take a look at a company which will gain from the 3G iPhone, even without a single component inside it - Qualcomm.

Craig Mathias wrote a piece last week on 802.21, a convergence standard promoted by the likes of InterDigital and Intel. Folks at 9to5 Mac immediately saw the iPhone connection and hatched what I thought was a highly speculative story. That Apple will push this yet official standard to include WiMAX into its impending 3G iPhone, based on convenient interpretation of a series of events, is the work of a very creative mind.

For the uninitiated, 802.21 is one of the various standards being promoted for convergence. So, if the infrastructure is in place, devices using this standard will perform ‘vertical’ handovers across the standards such as WiFi, WiMAX and 3G.

Before I move on to argue why I don’t see signs of a WiMAX-enabled iPhone yet, I should mention that as a fan of the convergence movement, I would love for one of the convergence standards to succeed. The idea of an iPhone enabling this seamless mobility does sound very appealing to me. Just that I don’t see the impending 3G iPhone implementing it to include WiMAX.

Let me dissect the evidence that the 9 to 5 Mac article presents to defuse the speculation –

“In March, that company revealed it has signed-up Apple (and RIM) as a licensee for its 3G technologies….. This news generated sparks of speculation that InterDigital’s SlimChip architecture might be deployed in products from Apple.”

The license agreement between Apple and IDCC is perhaps two-fold. Firstly, it is for the 3G intellectual property. Secondly, as I have written earlier, the iPhone will most likely have Infineon’s 3G chipset. Infineon, in turn, uses InterDigital’s 3G stack for which the latter gets a per-unit royalty. I think that Infineon’s solution has InterDigital’s contribution to the baseband design. But to think that the SlimChip will be central to the iPhone based on these signs is a stretch. In any case, 802.21 support or WiMAX is independent of SlimChip. You can read more about my iPhone 3G speculations here.

“..we know Apple has aggressive sales targets for this device, and that the company plans to introduce iPhones into more territories this year; we know that some of those target countries, Russia, for example, are moving to adopt WiMax;..”

This argument perhaps makes sense when the networks are more mature. In my opinion, a WiMAX-enabled iPhone this year will have limited value if you look at the bigger picture. Putting in a WiMAX solution not only hits its margins but also delays the product launch due to the additional logistics. That does not make economic sense to Apple and may in fact counter its aggressive sales target.

“Apple’s success in bringing new technologies to market was made most clear when it single-handedly popularised WiFi technology (AirPort) when it introduced the iBook in 1999….InterDigital’s move to join the WiFi Alliance this year, followed by its move to license its 3G modem technology to a shadowy (unnamed) Asian fabless semiconductor company also passed under the radar.”

Promoting a mobile standard is a much more complicated task. With WiFi, you are talking about interfacing with the consumer directly. With mobile-phones, the effort needs the confluence of the chipset vendor, handset vendor and the carrier. Also, InterDigital joined the WiFi alliance because of the technology’s role as a key component for 802.21. Neither this nor its modem technology licensing moves should relate to the iPhone.

While the idea of WiMAX+3G is great on paper, the logistics involve high-levels of risk that Apple will be unwilling to take. Platform stability and testing issues will limit Apple’s short-term options for iPhone. Hence, Infineon and most others who have already been designed into the current iPhone will retain their places. We will perhaps see GPS capabilities, but WiMAX, in my mind, is a non-starter for this version.

This does not however preclude a convergence standard/implementation like 802.21 from being included in the iPhone. I can see utility in having mobility between WiFi and 3G as a possible trend, and perhaps as the only real seamless mobility possibility for the 3G iPhone. But even this will be met with resistance from the carriers who will fear cannibalization of their revenue stream.

In summary, based on the current evidence and the inherent technical challenges, I will have to reject any suggestion of a WiMAX-enabled iPhone in 2008. I don’t see it, even with the InterDigital connection. To be fair to Andy Space who wrote the 9 to 5 Mac article, he has made it amply clear that this is pure speculation. While I did not find his central idea or his reasons as strong, I did enjoy reading the article for what it is – another out-of-whack and sensational iPhone rumor.

(Thanks to Dan Butterfield from iPhonAsia for pointing me to this article)

[Long InterDigital at the time of writing]

Recently, I looked at Qualcomm’s 2008 fiscal second quarter earnings results. Subsequently, I also talked about the various mobile chipset opportunities that Qualcomm was positioned to exploit. Let us first look at how Qualcomm seeks to address some of these market areas.

Qualcomm’s 3G baseband chipset strategy is very comprehensive. The company is targeting low-end phones in emerging markets with cheap single-chip solutions. It expects QSC6010, which is driving CDMA growth in India, to be strong moving forward. Additionally, the company has invested heavily on its QSC6240 single-chip UMTS solution. With this low-cost product offering, the San Diego-based Qualcomm is hoping to drive the transition from GSM to WCDMA, especially in the high-volume markets.

Complementing these low-end 6000 series chips are the 7000 series of convergence platform chipsets. These chipsets combine the baseband functionality with an on-chip ARM-based processor to enable multiple smart-phones in mature markets. Additionally, the integration of the application processor allows Qualcomm to grab more of the handset ASP.

By addressing both the baseband and application processor markets, Qualcomm provides the most complete and powerful product portfolio among mobile silicon vendors. Besides, it is evident that Qualcomm is the only player to address all market segments – low, middle and high-end – efficiently.

Other players compete with Qualcomm in a subset of these segments but no one has either the technical acumen or the deep-pockets to make a difference across the board. They also have their deficiencies. Marvell, for example, focuses on low-cost, high volume chips but is currently behind in testing and development does not have a critical mass of design wins and also lacks a full-portfolio of connectivity solutions. InterDigital has set its sights only on the high-end smart-phone segment fully understanding that performance differentiation is the key to its success. TI lacks an in-house 3G roadmap that is detrimental to its dominating market share. If you are interested in understanding the competitive landscape in the chipset vendor space, I will direct you to my detailed valuation series on TI, InterDigital, Marvell and Broadcom available in my blog. I have also covered other vendors such as STM-NXP, Infineon and Icera to present a fairly complete picture of the chipset vendor space.

In summary, Qualcomm has the right ammunition to sustain and grow in the mobile phone and the data-card markets. Its business model has allowed it to develop a broad portfolio of solutions that dwarfs competition. As 3G grows, Qualcomm will grow with it, not just from this product mix but also the IP that forms the core of these technologies.

[Long Qualcomm at the time of writing]

In my last article on the STM, NXP merger, I analyzed the JV from STM’s perspective. The merger is a clear sign of further consolidation in the 3G space. To understand this further, it is also illustrative to look at how other players in the vendor space can be impacted by this merger.

The importance of this merger primarily comes from my thesis that Texas Instruments has fumbled in its 3G strategy, leaving its huge market share wide open for other vendors to steal from it. Especially at risk is its huge Nokia account. The Finnish handset maker has already moved towards a multiple vendor strategy sourcing 3G chips from STM. Last year, it committed about 200 engineers to STM for the latter’s 3G chipset development program. Nokia is essentially focusing away from chipset IP and development. This has worked against TI and into the hands of STM and Broadcom (whose EDGE solutions are now being sourced by Nokia.) You can get further insights into TI’s wireless strategy and its potential pitfalls in my valuation series here, here and here.

The JV can further consolidate this relationship between Nokia and STM. Further, the complete portfolio of connectivity solutions will make it very attractive for the future smartphones from Nokia and the others. So, the JV will likely add to TI’s wireless woes. The impediment that I see is performance. The JV will still be behind Infineon, InterDigital, Icera and Qualcomm on performance. The hope is that a renewed R&D thrust will help narrow the gap in future designs.

Broadcom is perhaps another vendor for whom the merger can cause headaches. The Irvine-based company has in the past made its ambitions apparent – to work diligently towards the coveted third spot in the mobile vendor matrix. Broadcom has been very aggressive in its mobile campaign, not just with product announcements but also in its legal battles with Qualcomm to defend its IP position. The bottom-line is that it is also looking to grab market share from TI. If the JV can improvise on the connectivity solutions and build a stable and complete platform, it will give Broadcom a run for its money. But Broadcom will still have the time-to-market advantage for now. You can read more on Broadcom’s wireless outlook and my valuation analysis here, here and here.

Qualcomm is less likely to be threatened by the JV though the latter now has access to Samsung. Qualcomm’s technology leadership, its support network and its longer-term view of the mobile space places it on firmer ground. Infineon, which is likely to be at the heart of iPhone 3G, will now be a distant second in the European vendor matrix. InterDigital, Infineon’s 3G partner, will have to rely on performance as it tries to gain in the smart-phone market. Marvell and Icera among others will also come up with niche selling points to counter such consolidation.

So, while the price STM paid for the merger can be debated, there is no doubt in my mind that it is a consolidation that will send some vendors scampering. I have a lot of questions in my mind now. Will someone pick up Freescale as well? Will TI target an acquisition that will give it 3G baseband capabilities, perhaps InterDigital or Icera? Will InterDigital and Infineon further formalize their strong alliance to gain scale? Well, there is consolidation in the air. I can’t wait to see how the vendor matrix ends up a couple of years from now.

Marvell provides application-specific standard products (ASSPs). The company has substantial expertise and intellectual property in the areas of DSP, embedded ARM-based microprocessor, analog and mixed-signal integrated circuit design. These strengths are responsible for Marvell’s phenomenal rise in the storage market. Today, the Santa Clara-based company (incidentally, Atheros’ back-door neighbors and competitors) leverages this expertise to develop high-performance System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for various markets.

Marvell’s product portfolio includes solutions for data storage, Ethernet, cellular, wireless networking, personal area networking, video-image processing and power management solutions. Marvell serves a variety of markets including convergence of voice, data and video in consumer electronics goods. Marvell’s customers include storage companies such as Samsung, Toshiba and Western Digital, networking companies like Cisco, Juniper Networks and Foundry Networks, and cellular companies including Research in Motion (RIMM), Motorola, and Palm.

Marvell, in the words of its CEO Sehat Sutardja, is “inherently a product cycle company.” He continues to say that the company’s growth rate is directly related to new product adoption and transition. The strategy is to look at long-term investments that can grow on a top-line basis at 15-20% y-o-y. In the context of the current situation, this directly relates to Marvell’s thinking behind the acquisition of Intel’s applications and communications processor business.

We can divide the company’s products into three broad business areas namely storage, Ethernet and wireless. Besides these, other major products include solutions for VoIP, printing, digital video processing and power management. With this as a background, we should be able to take a deeper look at Marvell’s fortunes moving forward

The web is abuzz with the news that the latest iPhone 2.0 beta software revealed whose chipset was at the heart of the impending 3G iPhone. The fairly innocuous and cryptic word ‘SGOLD3’ embedded in the code points to Infineon’s SGOLD-3H baseband processor. While this is news for many enthusiastically expecting the 3G iPhone, it is only a confirmation of what I have been saying since last fall – Infineon and InterDigital will be at the heart of the next iPhone.

The Infineon SGOLD-3H together with the MP-EH platform is a natural solution for Apple. Infineon’s SGOLD2 and the MP-EU platform form the basis of iPhone V1 and Apple has spent considerable time and energy optimizing it for performance, stability and power consumption. It makes sense to carry the good work forward with MP-EH which looks very identical to MP-EU rather than reset it with another new platform. You can read the rest of my prediction analysis from last fall here and here.

While Infineon’s SGOLD-3H appears to have been the default solution for the 3G iPhone, Apple definitely will not regret its choice. The Infineon solution is a Category 8 HSDPA solution, meaning that it supports incoming data rates (equals download speeds) of up to 7.2 Mbps. It has a fractionally spaced equalizer implementation of the receiver (which I think is predominantly InterDigital’s IP) that allows the realization of nominal data rates in mobile conditions. Not surprisingly, Infineon was one of the three companies picked as the 3G performance leaders by Signals Research. You can read more of my SGOLD3 musings here.

It is also important to acknowledge the other winners if the MP-EH and SGOLD-3H are in the next iPhone. First and perhaps the biggest will be InterDigital. Infineon’s 3G solutions use InterDigital’s stack. InterDigital is bound to get per-unit royalty and its deal with Apple last summer is a good pointer towards this direction. The King of Prussia company is Infineon’s behind-the-scene partner for 3G. My extensive coverage of the InterDigital connection can be found here and here.

Marvell, I think, will continue to supply the WiFi provided the interoperability issues it faced with its previous offerings are ironed out. With the Garmin Nuvifone round the corner, it is quite possible that iPhone will have GPS too. Broadcom is in a nice position to offer a bundle of its WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS offerings and may come out a big winner despite losing on the baseband front. As with the chipset itself, I expect Apple to retain most current component vendors who have met Apple’s serious performance expectations last time around. More on the iPhone 3G potential features can be found here.

I am glad that my iPhone 3G predictions are expected to be true. While the actual winners will not be determined until a tear-down, this is good intermediate information. Infineon is trading close at $7.37, close to its 52-week low of $6.26. InterDigital is trading around $20 today. If you have not read my InterDigital valuation series, this is perhaps a good time to do it from here. With the details of the iPhone 3G consolidating, now is perhaps a good time to pick this stock up even if you are looking at some quick short-term profits.

[Long InterDigital at the time of writing]

Bristol-based Icera Semiconductors announced today that it was acquiring Sirific Wireless for its complementary mobile RF capabilities. With this all-share merger for an undisclosed sum, Icera now hopes to offer a more complete 3G+ mobile chipset. (Read earlier coverage of Icera here and here.)

Sirific, founded in 2000, is a fabless semiconductor company developing CMOS RF transceivers for various mobile technologies including 3G and beyond. It boasts of expertise in digital RF, one of the more difficult design problems in mobile circuitry. It has raised around $60mn till date.

With a series C funding closed recently, Icera has now raised a little over $140mn in venture funding. So, the combined entity has over $200mn in venture money – an impressive amount demonstrating the VC confidence in this startup. Icera plans to raise a further $100mn later this year positioning itself for an IPO at the London stock exchange in 2 years.

Is it justified in dreaming big? Why go for Sirific?

Well, Icera has a niche product with its soft modems. Soft modems are highly customizable and upgradeable. The technology and the concepts involved, if rightly done, can be used for any wireless standard allowing for easier integration that is vital for tomorrow’s convergence devices. Icera’s thinking is that Sirific’s RF frontend and digital RF expertise will complement its revolutionary Livanto soft modem solution. This will not only allow Icera to come up with more complete, in-house platforms and reference designs but also offer a roadmap to highly integrated baseband + RF products in the future.

Icera is beginning to gain traction in the wireless data card market that it is currently targeting. It has signed a deal with Option, Europe’s laptop wireless data card leader and aims to capture 33% of the global data card market by the end of next year. But with the move towards in-built wireless broadband capabilities, products such as Qualcomm’s Gobi and the convergence devices phenomenon, data cards will become superfluous in the future. So to create a larger impact, the company has to make it big in the higher volume mobile phone space.

It has, however, not gotten nearly as much traction in the mobile space. What it needs is a strong alliance with a company like TI that offers application processors. Like I mentioned for InterDigital, such an alliance will allow it to piggyback on TI’s support network and economy of scale to win market share for its baseband (now baseband + RF) business. In turn, this will also help TI retain its 3G market share.Earlier coverage on this topic can be found here, here and here.

Icera has the technology to take it into the future. It needs to however sustain in the fiercely competitive mobile vendor space. The data card market will help on that front in the short term. Besides positively approaching the mobile phone market with the strategic acquisition of Sirific, Icera has certainly made a bold statement indicating that its IPO ambitions are real. The flotation valuation of such an IPO will be determined much by the design wins it secures in the mobile broadband space and perhaps on a few other strategic alliances.

[Originally for Sramana Mitra's site]

In the previous article, I discussed what an acquisition of InterDigital can do to TI. What then will happen to the cellular industry and the 3G value chain?

If TI acquires InterDigital, I think there will be further market consolidation in the 3G space. Firstly, Nokia and Motorola will be happy that they can compete with ‘Qualcomm inside’ phones from Samsung and LG. Until Nokia and Qualcomm cool off on all their IP issues, it is unlikely that the Finnish company will get chips from Qualcomm. So, the entire Nokia business, which until now was TI’s monopoly, is now wide open. An InterDigital acquisition is one way for TI to retain this market. Also, Samsung and LG may also get a viable alternative to pursue a multiple vendor strategy.

If TI acquires InterDigital, its main competitors will feel added pressure moving forward. Qualcomm, the undisputed performance leader so far, is now being challenged by InterDigital, Infineon and Icera. The Qualcomm advantage still comes from its unsurpassed support network and the scale of operation. But TI can complement InterDigital to match Qualcomm on these two fronts as well, thereby erasing its competitive advantage.

If TI acquires InterDigital, Broadcom will take a bigger blow as its wireless strategy seemingly rests on capturing TI’s market share both in baseband and in the application processor market. Infineon, which currently has a strong alliance with InterDigital, and which I suspect has key elements of the latter’s 3G advanced receiver IP, will run the risk of being marginalized in 3G. Similar arguments can be made for Marvell, Freescale and ST Microelectronics among other chipset vendors.

If TI acquires InterDigital, it can potentially generate up to $10 billion of additional revenue over the next five years. The handset vendors like Nokia will be happy to see crucial 3G patents in the hands of ‘one of them.’ This will be an important factor securing TI design wins into the future. Assuming that a deal is closed at my $75 valuation of InterDigital, the sale price will be around $3.5bn. Under this condition, I will value TI between $36-$37.

Clearly, the two companies have distinct cultures and business model. But if these issues are dealt well, the combination can be explosive. What amazes me about InterDigital is the immense value it offers to companies with completely different business model. If it considers being acquired, it will be hot property. While I am not predicting an acquisition here, I think this is an option that TI should think about. Perhaps it is thinking about InterDigital, or even Icera, or has an accelerated in-house 3G/HSDPA program. Or it is just waiting out for the 4G promise, dodging the 3G curveballs thrown at it in the interim.