By : BP Tiwari
I was reading a recent article from beccem semiconductors who apparently has biggest market share in wimax chipset about their intent to launch a new chipset which will support LTE. Beceem vice president of business development Lars Johnsson clarified that “Beceem isn’t taking the much bigger LTE chipset market head on—at least not yet. Rather Beceem is producing a dual-mode WiMax-LTE chipset targeting device makers looking to encapsulate all 4G connectivity in a single device. The chipset won’t just be dual-mode; it will support both time-division duplexing (TDD) and frequency division duplexing (FDD), channel sizes up to 20 MHz, seamless hand-off between radio technologies and the plethora of different 4G bands available globally. Combined, those capabilities make it the chipset for any flavor of 4G”, Johnsson said.
In a parallel shift the other prime WiMAX Chipmaker Sequans communication announced that they have licensed unique LTE IP from Dorfour Ltd., a Tel-Aviv-based 4G IC company. The IP enables maximum likelihood performance at four times the efficiency in size and power consumption of competing solutions, contributing a key component to Sequans’ LTE solution. Apparently Alcatel lucent and Motorola ventures have invested in the company for their LTE platform development. [1]
Wavesat the Canadian chipmaker who is running little late to grab the WiMAX Market has also announced their new odyssey chipset family which will allow their customers to design products based on WiMAX, Wi-fi and LTE.
The mainstream Korean suppliers Samsung and LG started their 4G engagements with WiMAX and extending their leaderships in initial LTE devices. [2]
Do you see a common thread here? I often consider whether LTE is competition to WiMAX suppliers or providing some incredible opportunity to new wimax entrants (beceem, Sequans, Wavesat) who have gained the necessary insight about the 4G technologies and are ready to make a mark in one of the highest growing data segment. I am eagerly waiting to hear announcements from other WiMAX chipset during MWC in similar lines.
I am convinced about the fact that there is enough motivation and opportunities for WiMAX Device manufacturers for showing their interest in LTE market;
- Common pool of technology and research for LTE and WiMAX as both the technology has a lot in common. In the positioning paper Driving 4G Motorola said “At Motorola, the WiMAX and LTE development organizations are one team working in close collaboration to bring both WiMAX and LTE to market quickly and with a high focus on quality. Motorola is leveraging upwards of 80% of its WiMAX development efforts to develop a best-in-class LTE platform that will meet early trials and commercial deployments.”
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Over a period of time Sequans, Beceem, Wavesat and other new entrants have developed an ecosystem of manufacturers from Taiwan who specialize in making data centric devices. I don’t expect a handset driven LTE market for at least next 2-3 years which would certainly be the place where bigger names would engage, the Taiwanese ODM’s are more than willing to enter the market of Dongles and Indoor Devices in LTE space.( Source : UMTS Forum)
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During the wimax ecosystem development the New WiMAX chipset manufacturers have also got an opportunity to work with bigger names like Motorola, Huawei, Samsung, ZTE , ALU which they are leveraging in their LTE plans as these supplier are also developing LTE systems.
The debate over WiMAX and LTE would persist and operators who have profited [3] from deploying early WiMAX are not only the benefactor but it seems like the WiMAX device manufacturers also has a significant role to play in LTE market.
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