Sunil Jain

Embed vs. Embeddable: 3G Notebooks and Mobile Broadband

The same logic (as above) was prevalent in the early days of WLAN. Why embed WiFi chipsets unless it's definitely going to be used, since it's just a costly lump of electronics. Now, WLAN is standard in almost all handsets. However, the issue of embedding 3G is unfortunately much more complex because of multiple standards. When we moved from 2G to 3G, people believed that we will have one global standard. Well, we don't (CDMA2000, WCDMA, etc.). Now, we are moving from 3G to 4G, we still don't have one standard (LTE, WiMax). Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with technology but corporate greed (who has more patent than the other guy). Nokia fought the IP battle with Qualcomm on 3G but lost (or settled). More battles will follow with LTE and WiMax on the patents. Laptop manufacturers will still have to pay royalties to QCOM or others for every 3G/4G chipset that they embed on their device. This is not the case for WLAN. makes the decision more difficult, doesn't it? I don't believe that the wireless industry is going to get its act right till 6G or 7G (btw, they excuse their "corporate greed" by calling it "fostering innovating"). Laptop manufacturers will continue to make guesses on what technology to embed (where the mass market is). This was the case for 3G, and now, it will continue to be the case for 4G going forward. sucks !!