Docomo, Samsung, Fujitsu, NEC and Panasonic have confirmed long-standing rumours that they will form a new fabless chip company in March to challenge Qualcomm in 4G ICs.
The thinking is that, with the weakness of STE, it would be unwise for the world to rely on Qualcomm for mobile chips, where it has 37% world market share, especially after the experience of CDMA where the San Diego company is thought to have exploited its strong IP position too enthusiastically.
The Japanese announcement says, rather obviously, that it will develop ‘feature-rich, small-size, low-power-consumption semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality’.
Although the US carriers are reported to be bullish on 4G, with Verizon and AT&T leading the way, and although telecoms infrastructure capex is forecast to grow this year for the first time for two years, the rest of the world seems a long way from adopting 4G in a major way.
Docomo is the only company in Japan operating an LTE service. Two other Japanese operators, Softbank and KDDI, say they’ll move to LTE.