Contributors: Bob Wheeler, Jag Bolaria, Joseph Byrne, Michael Stanford In This Issue January’s CES show led to a few mobile-TV announcements. Siano Mobile Silicon demonstrated its new SMS1100 family. The company was the first to deliver a multistandard receiver, the SMS1000/SMS1010 family, and the SMS1100 extends this approach by adding support for ISDB-T 1Seg and 3Seg. Like the SMS1010, the SMS1100 is an MCM integrating a demodulator and tuner. The new design also addresses the mobile-reception problems that plagued the SMS1000/SMS1010 and maintains the excellent power dissipation of the older design, although Siano has not yet provided performance or power figures. Japan’s 1Seg is the most successful mobile-digital TV service worldwide, and chip vendors must support this standard to be successful. Shipments of 1Seg-enabled handsets, however, have tapered off in recent months. The attach rate has plateaued at just over 30%, and total handset shipments have declined after a strong 1H07. For Siano, the best opportunities may be with media-player and navigator OEMs because their systems are more likely to be sold worldwide—and thus benefit from multistandard capability—than Japan’s nonpareil handsets. Adding ISDB-T support, though, may have come at little development cost. If Siano can price its receiver accordingly, offsetting a die-area penalty of supporting multiple standards, then the company may gain traction with OEMs focused exclusively on Japan. Growing deployment of ISDB-T in Brazil provides further growth opportunities. Also at CES, GB20600-supplier Legend Silicon announced the LGS-8GS6 and LGS-8GA6 receivers for mobile applications. Functionally equivalent, the 8GS6 integrates a tuner from Sharp and the 8GA6 integrates a tuner from Analog Devices. Both also include memory in the MCM. GB20600 is China’s national standard for digital TV. It is robust enough to support mobile reception, but its memory requirements are high (note the use of a separate memory die in the 8Gx6, above) and, without time-slicing or another power-saving method, power consumption is excessive (the 8GS6 consumes 530mW) for handheld systems. For these, and most likely political reasons, there is interest in a mobile-specific standard. While the government is busy comparing the various options for a national mobile standard, DigiTimes reported in mid-January that supporters of the CMMB specification, backed by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), are moving forward with their hybrid satellite-terrestrial deployment. The CMMB camp is, therefore, either dangerously flouting authority, or it has secured approval in a backroom deal. Resolving conflict promptly is critical if the Chinese mobile-TV industry is to use the Summer Olympics as a market catalyst. Telegent Systems is the lone supplier of mobile-TV chips pursuing the analog TV market. Post-CES company announced the TLG1120. The TLG1120 enhances the company’s earlier NTSC/PAL TLG100 design by adding support for the SECAM standard, thereby offering reception worldwide. Emphasizing the viability of the strategy to support old-fashioned analog TV, Telegent also announced in January that it had shipped 5 million units in the preceding nine months (i.e., since inception), making it one of the leading mobile-TV chip suppliers. On the standards front, the most interesting news out of CES was that of forward progress toward adding mobility to the ATSC standard. The Open Mobile Video Coalition announced that it would trial the so-called MPH technology put forth by LG Electronics and Samsung’s A-VSB technology in parallel. Both technologies take advantage existing broadcast infrastructure, reducing the investment required to bring a mobile service online compared with MediaFlo, DVB-SH, or other technologies and circumventing the business-model issues that pay services offered by mobile-phone operators face. A mobile standard may reinvigorate free-to-air broadcasters in the U.S., where cable and satellite are the dominant media for receiving TV. A key technology hurdle is that ATSC uses 8-VSB, a single-carrier technology, instead of OFDM, which is used in every other digital-TV standard (except S-DMB). A compromise between two proposals, GB20600 also supports a single-carrier mode, lending an advantage to Legend if it chooses to pursue the North American market. —Joe Additional coverage appears in our report A Guide to Mobile TV Chips. Last week, the 3GPP has announced it has completed the specification for LTE, the next-generation cellular technology that will become part of 3GPP Release 8. Commonly known as a 4G technology, LTE is designed to greatly increase data rates, achieving up to 326Mbps downstream and 86Mbps upstream. The new technology will begin carrier trials later this year, with deployment likely to begin in 2010, a decade after the initial deployments of 3G (UMTS) technology. Shipments of LTE handsets are likely to remain negligible for several years; UMTS took five years to reach even 5% of the overall handset market. The winds of change favor LTE. As the designated evolutionary path of 3GPP, LTE is likely to be adopted by most, if not all, carriers currently using GSM/UMTS, which is used in more than 80% of handsets today. Most other handsets use some version of Qualcomm’s CDMA technology. Qualcomm’s 4G technology, called UMB, received a major blow when U.S.-based Verizon, the largest CDMA carrier, announced last month that it has chosen LTE as its 4G standard. Sprint, the other major U.S.-based CDMA carrier, has long-standing plans to deploy WiMax, another 4G technology, although it is not clear whether such deployment would exclude UMB or LTE. Whether LTE holds 80% or 100% of the 4G market, it will clearly be the leading 4G technology. Although shipments of 4G handsets will initially be small, handset-processor vendors cannot ignore this next-generation initiative. Vendors that demonstrate full functionality in early deployments will establish a track record that will help them win larger deployments later. The 3G chip market continues to be dominated by TI, Qualcomm, and Ericsson (EMP), the three companies that supported early 3G deployments. Leading handset-processor vendors must add LTE to their long list of R&D tasks, if they wish to remain leading vendors in the next decade. —Linley Additional coverage appears in our report A Guide to Wireless Handset Processors. Motorola announced last week that it will increase its usage of Qualcomm processors in UMTS (3G) handsets. A year ago, Motorola announced it was working with Texas Instruments to develop a UMTS ASIC. Due to the high cost of ASIC development, we expected this ASIC to be Motorola’s primary UMTS solution. The new announcement could indicate some problems or delays in the development of the TI ASIC. Motorola could also be hedging its bets to ensure a smooth ramp for its UMTS handsets. In any case, despite being Motorola’s largest supplier of EDGE (2G) processors, Freescale remains the odd man out in Motorola’s 3G plans. —Linley Additional coverage of 3G processors appears in our report A Guide to Wireless Handset Processors.
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