Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
This time last year J P Morgan said mobile processors were a “money pit” for Intel while Morgan Stanley said intel needed $8-10 billion of mobile revenues to break even which “seems unachievable.”
Morgan Stanley estimated Intel’s mobile opex at $3.7 billion on top of which it had to pay customers $50 a chip-set to use them.
The big failure, said Morgan Stanley, is Intel’s inability to integrate LTE baseband processors with the apps processor.
Qualcomm does and now MediaTek has produced an integrated chip-set selling for $60.
And Intel has abandoned its SoFIA/Broxton chip-set development.
Is this the end for Intel’s mobile apps effort?
Intel’s been in and out of mobile before with the ARM-based X-Scale, and it’s still got its 1,000 engineer modem development effort going to try and get an iPhone slot, but it’s all looking a bit terminal.
I think Qualcomm play the political game pretty well, ExST, the Clintons have been regular visitors at Irwin Jacaobs’ La Jolla estate and he holds fund-raisers there for them. And you don’t expect Sisu from guys called Tim.
Well maybe Ollila had Sisu, SEPAM, but he then appointed his mate, a lawyer, to be CEO and lawyers don’t have Sisu.
I suspect the toughness came from the Herculean efforts of the US wireless establishment – AT&T pre-break-up et al – to squash Qualcomm in its early days, SEPAM, Irwin Jacobs fought heroically to keep Qualcomm alive in the face of apparently overwhelming odds against him. The iron kind of enters your soul in such circumstances.
Seems his son has inherited much of this. I heard him speak on TV as the Nokia wars started. He has perfected the speak softly approach. Nokia had already had a near death experience tanks to Motorola so I wonder why Nokia hasn’t a similar toughness.
Especially as “Sisu” is so very much a Finnish concept.
Maybe Qualcomm’s toughness comes from their confidence that their anti-competitive behaviour will not be prosecuted by US anti-trust authorities. For whatever reasons (apparently, they had to share essential defense related technologies with the US Govt), they benefitted from adequate “sponsorship” from the US Govt. As a consequence GSM introduction in the US was delayed and CDMA was protected, creating a de-facto monopoly for several years. For sure, this monopoly did not please AT&T.
Nokia did not have such strong sponsor, plus they ended up with the wrong sisu-less CEO as well…
On a similar subject, it’s interesting to watch Apple now. Is Mr Cook sisu-less and did he make the wrong choice to upset the Federal Govt? Or has he got so much sisu that he can afford to fight the FBI? Time will tell…
Come to think of it you still owe me two pints of Guiness, Mike. In vino veritas in Guinness tightass.
It might be more interesting to know what they haven’t patented to avoid letting competitors know what they’ve done, Mike, after all they never patented the Viterbi algorithm (although that might have been because others also came up with it).
Now that is particularly interesting SEPAM and could explain a lot. Instead of getting down to doing some nitty-gritty research into telecoms chips they’ve tried to buy their way in – Infineon, contra-revenues etc – and using an outside foundry rather than developing in-house telecom process technology. This is typical Intel when it operates in areas outside its core PC/datacentre business and probably explains why it always fails in them.
Good point neitherstnorste, the list of fallers at the mobile IC fence is long – Freescale, NXP, STE, Intel, Ericsson, Infineon but, in good semi industry fashion, they have been replaced by MediaTek, Spreadtrum, Rockchip, RDA, HiSilicon, and Xiaomi. The constant is, of course, Qualcomm – maintained as the industry leader by an exceptional R&D spend.
And more by an exceptional patent portfolio which they avoid licencing on FRAND conditions !!
The enormous focus on research is probably a result of the strong academic background of the founders. How they acquired their famously tough attitude I do not know. Anyone knows?
The explosive growth in Chinese patent filing is closely related also to the Chinese Employee Inventors Act which provides some serious financial incentives.
Well Mike Intel sees itself as involved in the computer business and it has put WiFi radios on its computer chips for some years, and computers are getting more and more mobile, and so Intel probably sees it will need to put LTE capability on its computer chips.
Sceppers what a very kind comment – thank you.
The Mobile Chipset arena is one of the toughest of them all. Intel IMHO is missing some specific focus and most likely they are missing the right (and rightly empowered) Management. It’s a pity they have wasted so much money but at least (and unlike others, such as, ehm, STE) they may have enough resources to survive the waste of energy and money
Well that explains it Mike – Intel is continuing to make a big effort in LTE – it clearly sees it as a core capability.
Why would you need LTE as a core capability if you’re not in the mobile chipset business ?
That big effort in LTE is not mirrored in their patenting statistics. Sure, it is on the increase but they are light years behind Ericsson, ZTE, QUalcomm, Huawei etc.
Agreed with you, Mike & Scott. Same as with anyone in Singapore, they seem to be pretty relax not knowing something boiling inside.
Well they’re OK for the time being because Intel has not publicly conceded that ir’s exiting apps processors Mike, if it sold or closed Munich it would be conceding that it is pulling out. And there again Intel may think it needs the technology for other things than handsets. And there again Intel’s stance in mobile has, like a whore’s knickers, switched pretty quickly between off and on.
But Munich doesn’t design Apps processors – it (and Singapore) design the LTE cores that are holding the whole thing up. As far as I know, Israel has had the processor designs ready for ages.
I do wonder sometimes if Intel might have been better off buying Icera and just investing in expanding that.
David, as ever I quick turn to your column as it appears in my mailbox. Not so much for Chip industry insights (which frankly I know little about) but more for your thoughtful prose.. ‘ like a whore’s knickers, switched pretty quickly between off and on.’ Please carry on the good work.
Alll the best, Sceppers.
You should hear him on his fourth Guinness Sceppers. Last time he was quoting Latin phrases to me 🙂
>> whenever you talk to anyone from the ex-Infineon site in Munich they always claim things are going well.
Perhaps Upton Sinclair’s comment might apply, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”?
It does indeed look bleak but whenever you talk to anyone from the ex-Infineon site in Munich they always claim things are going well.