I'd like to reiterate Jim's request for technical elucidation of the Analog Devices announcement of a breakthrough technology called "direct conversion". For the full text of the ADI announcement, see Jim's original post last week:
127.0.0.1:3456/SI/~wsapi/investor/reply-11231825
There were a number of comments on this subject this week on both threads, but they were dismissive, and I suspect based on wishful thinking. For example, several commented that the 1,000 hour standby time announcement didn't come with a battery specification. While true, this may be short sighted.
I think this subject bears more investigation. Many Q investors have a lot on the line, and a full and fair appreciation of the potential competitive issues is important, whether you're bullish or not.
provides 30-50 percent savings in cost and size for next-generation dual-band and triple-band GSM phones.
If close to true, this is a major threat! While cheap GSM phones won't stop the CDMA juggernaut's progress in places where it's already dominant or without GSM competition (Korea, USA, Japan, etc.) it will make it much harder for CDMA to get a foothold in GSMland.
Tero's constant pounding on the handset issues, while it may have blinded him to everything else, doesn't make it any less true. People care about handset issues, and smaller and cheaper by these amounts will be a big deal.
Note, however, the reference to tri-band phones. Do they mean tri-mode? I thought GSM was universal and only needed one band. Where did I misunderstand? Is this a veiled reference to CDMA, or is this going to be BT's TDMA. Analog does have a license to make Q ASICs, right? Is another shoe going to drop soon?
The chipset enables up to 1,000 hours of standby time for GSM cellular phones
Sure, we need substantiation and specification, but ADI is not a hype company and I, for one, don't believe they got this number using a car battery. Remember, they also claim 30 to 50% reduction in size!
Othello paves the way for next-generation cellular phones by enabling data rates 25 to 30 times greater than today's GSM data rates of 14.4 kbps
That's 360 to 432kbps. If true, this too could have a big effect on the GSM titans, giving them yet another reason to extend what they have, rather than switch to CDMA and HDR. In addition to wanting to know how the heck this works, I'd like to know if Fortress Europe has the bandwidth to be able to provide "effective" medium bandwidth or just medium bandwidth in spec sheets only. I believe that a real world 384k data in Europe would hurt CDMA's progress badly.
the chipset is fully compliant with GSM standards and enables manufacturers to upgrade easily and adapt their products to multi-mode and multi-slot data applications.
Is this just std marketing blather, or could it shorten the time it takes designers to make use of the product?
"Siemens recognizes this as breakthrough technology, which helps to save cost, power and space in future GSM handheld devices,"
So they've already showed it to somebody, and they like it enough to say so publicly. At least it wasn't Nokia.
"By taking an RF system approach to radio integration, rather than a semiconductor manufacturing approach, Analog Devices' Othello trumps many of its RF competitors in the race toward single-chip radio,"
If I'm not mistaken, ADI is a George Gilder ascendant company, a good endorsement in my book. I'd really appreciate info, ideas, commentary, etc. on some or all of these topics. I remain quite bullish on the Q, just want to see all sides.
John |
