Huge venture capital investment in wireless technology start-ups has persuaded large companies to stand back and watch while the smaller firms engage in a bloodbath.

The larger firms are waiting to acquire the survivors. “There’s a tremendous amount of cash available in this sector but there are only a few places where people will make money," Joe Adams, vice-president for business development at SkyWorks, told the Globalpress Summit Conference in Monterey last week. 

"And the VCs will be expecting revenues from trade sales to large companies rather than IPOs,” he added.

Bruce Watkins, president of UWB start-up Pulse-Link, agreed: “There’s a grand future for UWB, but those taking on the market need to find ways to make money before the market develops.”

Watkins, whose first silicon is due this quarter, is to license technology in the meantime.

At Broadcom, the attitude is: “The markets for UWB and WiMAX are immature and our strategy is to engage in high volume markets,” said Dr Ed Frank, vice-president for R&D at Broadcom, “and the markets will be served by existing technologies. 802.11n -MIMO-enhanced WiFi - will be out before UWB, because it is compatible with 802.11 a, b and g.”

At Agere, CEO Richard Clemmer, dismissed the chances of UWB and WiMAX start-ups growing into significant firms. “They’ll never have a tier one customer; they’ll never have a competitive cost-base, and they’ll never have a significant IP base.”

Watkins of Pulse-Link retorted: “I have more patents than Agere does.” (Pulse-Link has 200 patents.) “I didn’t start this company to sell it,” added Watkins.

Meanwhile Clemmer added: “We’re uniquely positioned to act as an integrator because of our IP position, our tier one customers and our supply chain cost advantage.”

www.pulselink.net
www.skyworksinc.com