Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[khemara_qc]

TI expects 3G mobile chipset sales to soar

2004-11-23 06:53

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/23/content_394617.htm

HONG KONG: Texas Instruments (TI) Inc, the world's largest manufacturer of cellphone chips, announced last week that it expects its third-generation (3G) mobile chipset sales to overtake its second-generation chip business by 2006.

"It's probably not next year, but maybe the year after that," Doug Rasor, TI's worldwide strategic marketing manager, said during the 3G World Congress in Hong Kong.

Rasor said 3G chip revenues will probably surpass 2G revenues first, because 3G chips are more expensive, and unit sales will follow.

TI, which posted US$3.25 billion in revenues in the third quarter, derives about one-third of that from handset chip sales.

It supplies about two-thirds of the world's chips for phones that use GSM, the second-generation standard for wireless communications.

TI now makes chips for a new generation of phones, which use WCDMA, the 3G upgrade for GSM that allows data-rich functions like live broadcast streaming and video downloads.

Mobile phone operators hope such premium applications will justify their expense of billions of dollars to buy 3G licenses, upgrade their systems and develop new applications.

Companies with WCDMA services now at or near operation include Europe's Vodafone, Australia's Telstra Corp, Japan's NTT DoCoMo and France Telecom's Orange.

Reflecting the rapid rise of its 3G chips, 25 per cent of TI's sequential revenue growth for its wireless division in the third quarter came from WCDMA chip sales, Rasor said.

"It's on a hockey stick sort of curve," he said of the growth rate for WCDMA chip sales.

"3G is being rolled out pretty aggressively."

TI is also hoping enter market for 3G handset chips used in CDMA 2000, the world's other major standard for 3G mobile systems, and an area dominated by the technology's developer, Qualcomm Inc.

CDMA 2000 and its predecessor, CDMA, account for about 20 per cent of the world's 1.2 billion mobile subscribers. GSM and WCDMA make up most of the remainder.

Rasor said several handset makers are testing TI's newly developed CDMA 2000 chips. None have placed major orders.

Qualcomm's chief executive, Irwin Jacobs, also in Hong Kong for the congress, previously said his company developed WCDMA chips, and that it hoped to hold half of the market.

But, he acknowledged that will take at least "several years."

Agencies via Xinhua


(Business Weekly 11/23/2004 page15)