Wireless broadband and emerging markets change baseband rules

BOSTON, USA: Qualcomm, MediaTek, Infineon and Broadcom increased their share in cellular basebands in 2009 despite an overall decline in the market, as described in “Rapid Changes in the Baseband Market Lead to Rising Fortunes for a Chosen Few,” from the Strategy Analytics RF & Wireless Component market research service.

This comprehensive report explores market and technology trends, as well as competitive positioning and prospects for future success in cellular basebands.

According to Christopher Taylor, author of this report, “Qualcomm, MediaTek, ST-Ericsson, Infineon and Broadcom will dominate in basebands over the next five years, a market that will grow to more than $15 billion by 2014. These companies will continue to offer the most highly-integrated, power-efficient baseband processors capable of supporting high-rate wireless, new applications and cloud computing, either through integrated applications processing or partnerships with suppliers of external applications processors.”

Stuart Robinson, Director of the Handset Component Technologies market research service, added: “In 2009, MediaTek moved up to second in market share terms of revenue on the strength of its presence in China and the grey market, passing ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments. At the same time, market share leader, Qualcomm, made gains in W-CDMA, pushing farther ahead of its competitors in terms of revenue.”