Taiwan's handset manufacturers are increasingly switching from the Ericsson mobile phone platform to Qualcomm's own handset platform - report local industry sources. Sources told DigiTimes that because HTC has had good success with its Qualcomm-based 3G handsets, other major handset vendors such as Motorola, LG Electronics, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Palm all intend to adopt the Qualcomm platform for their 3G products.
The publication also noted that the loss of Ericsson's Mobile Platform Vice-Chairman in China was making it harder for the company to maintain its market share with the local OEMs. Earlier this year, Ericsson launched its first LTE-capable mobile phone platform - the M700, supporting peak data rates of up to 100Mbps in the downlink and up to 50Mbps in the uplink, which the company hoped would help it secure an early lead in the mobile modem market.
Last December, STMicroelectronics signed an agreement with Ericsson Mobile Platforms to supply 3G digital baseband processors to OEMs that are licensees of Ericsson Mobile Platforms' 3G mobile-phone technology. However, the company is reported to be distracted at the moment by its merger with NXP Wireless.
Sources also told DigiTimes that Asustek will be launching its first Qualcomm based 3G device next year and will concentrate future developments on Qualcomm and Marvell based platforms.
However, Qualcomm itself does not seem to be seeing any upside in the short term and has cut its forecasts for the remainder of this year. Qualcomm's CEO, Paul Jacobs told the Financial Times in an interview that he had seen a very sharp decline over the past two weeks in inventories of Qualcomm chips held by customers.
"They are trying to manage their working capital more carefully. ThereĆ's clearly some lessening of demand, but not as dramatic as you might think," he said, noting that Qualcomm was still predicting 25 per cent growth for its CDMA wireless technology in the 2009 calendar year.
On the web: DigiTimes - Financial Times
Posted to the site on 9th November 2008
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/34546.php