Vijay Nagarajan

Infineon, Marvell and the iPhone

WiFiguy, Thanks for the Tavor link. I will be cautious about Marvell and Apple. I reiterate, I see Marvell a possibility only in a second iPhone design. Also, it is not a question of 'not being able to refuse' but also about platform stability, testing etc. All that takes time..

XXa, I think you are confusing between the application processor and baseband processor capabilities. And there is a difference between chip and chipset..Broadcom does not have all the features you mentioned in a single chip! No one does. I will still stick to Infineon for the reasons I have been stating all along. Maybe I am stubborn:) but I am yet to see a valid counter-argument against the Infineon chipset. I may be wrong though!

You should also remember that Apple will make design decisions if it makes economic sense only. The first version did not have 3G but was a wildly successful product despite the array of 3G devices it was up against. So, Steve will not necessarily go with the best chipset there. He would rather decide it based on the value for his money.

Vijay

Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics: The Analog Wireless Trade-Off

WetWarrior.

I have asked the editing staff to take a look at it. Seems to have happened inadvertantly. In any case, you can read the original draft (without the repetitions) on my site-

wirelessanalyst.blogsp...

What Is SiRF's Valuation?

Your guess is as good as mine:).

What Is SiRF's Valuation?

Spartacus,

Please find my reply on my site.

-Vijay

3G iPhone and WiMAX: Another Sensational Rumor?

Mike, Appreciate your note. Point noted as well. I meant to say 'defuse'. It was a genuine error from my side and will be corrected.

Vijay

Qualcomm Thrives Amidst the Dominant European Mobile Presence

I agree. If they sell the spectrum, then they will become a chipset/IP company. And that means they will be competing with leaders in both the WiMAX and LTE space (for which they seem to be base-station side solutions.) I think it is time to get my NextWave post out.

Qualcomm: Great Quarter, Great Execution

Aman,

Appreciate your note. I will be answering this question in greater detail over my next couple of posts on QCOM. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, you can look at my earlier coverage on Gobi on my site that should give you some idea. I think Gobi as a concept is a great initiative by QCOM. I have very initial guesstimate numbers in that piece based on some aggressive market share assumptions. I will perhaps refine this estimate in my next few articles based on the cc. Here is the link to my October 24, 2007 article.

wirelessanalyst.blogsp...

Vijay

Why Is the LTE IPR Agreement Such a Tough Sell?

Robert,

Those were very interesting insights. Receiving meaningful revenue itself is a fair objective. This also brings up another interesting point. We may then have more than one group which aggregates IP meaning that unlike the 3G standards where individual companies go against each other, we may have these different groups litigating against each other. Any thoughts?

Qualcomm Thrives Amidst the Dominant European Mobile Presence

GlobalMacro,

I do have some coverage on Nextwave dating back to June 2007 in my blog. You can check it out here -

wirelessanalyst.blogsp...

I will do an updated article sometime in the near future. You could leave your comments and specific questions on my site and I will try to answer them.

Vijay

Apple's 10 Million iPhone Target

I agree that 10 million does not say much about Apple's profits. I expect there will be another price cut on the 2G product when the 3G iPhone comes along. But we should not discount the market share that Apple will capture. That is a non-trivial positive side-effect of the 10 million target. Besides, my hunch is that Apple will come up with a innovative range of phones in the years to come helping grow its market share. So, there is certainly optimism on that front.

Were Qualcomm's GSM Lawsuits Calculated?

I do not fault QCOM's legal strategy, not yet. My point was that if the company is confident of absorbing the downsides of these losses, this is not a bad strategy. But defending these patents in the light of earlier work from other companies is going to be an uphill battle.

Incidentally, my understanding is that earlier agreements with Nokia covering CDMA were contingent on QCOM dropping any claims on GSM. Read sramanamitra.com/2007/.../
for more color on this.

Are Analysts Misleading Investors on Qualcomm?

JGG, I think the point that was being made is that if QualComm's licensing model breaks (and as you say, by the amount of royalties paid), and if QualComm cannot increase its chipset market share (since Nokia is not its customer and is unlikely to be given the existing suppliers and the current legal situation), then perhaps the stock would not be as strong! Basically, the IP business will grow but the chipset business may stint and that is not good in the long run, esp. in 4G where the patent play is not as strong and the chipset market share will be the one to count.