QCOM--Cell Standard: (Today's IBD)
The industry needs standards for features like the new camera-equipped cell phones and color screens, says Stan Bruederle, an analyst with market research firm Gartner Dataquest.
"Many applications are just starting to come to market," he said. "I don't think people have figured out what the real hot applications will be for the 3G (third-generation, or next-generation) cell phones yet."
This alliance could help cell phone companies develop these new features, he says.
One loser in this could be Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) The San Diego-based company invented one of the major cell phone standards. It's called code division multiple access, or CDMA. Qualcomm makes CDMA chips and licenses CDMA technology.
Qualcomm couldn't get an executive to comment for this article. The company last week sued Texas Instruments for breach of contract, though some analysts believe the legal action resulted from TI's expansion into CDMA.
The new alliance might be a move against Qualcomm, says Allen Leibovitch, an analyst with market research firm International Data Corp. He doubts that Qualcomm will be invited to join the group.
"It's going to get nasty," Leibovitch said.
On May 15, Texas Instruments, STMicro and Nokia together announced plans to develop a next-generation CDMA chipset, called CDMA2000.
"That was a direct challenge to Qualcomm," Leibovitch said.
But TI's Vial says the alliance won't exclude anyone who wants to join.
Some analysts on Tuesday speculated that the alliance is a defensive move against Intel and Microsoft Corp., (MSFT) which are both targeting cell phone markets. Intel's chips and Microsoft's Windows operating system dominate the PC field.
But MIPI officials deny this is the case. An Intel spokeswoman says the chipmaker might well join the alliance.
"We've always been a strong supporter of open industry specifications," said Intel spokeswoman Laura Anderson.
That decision might rest with Ron Smith. The Intel vice president heads the company's Wireless Computing and Communications Group.
Anderson says Intel must work out some technical issues before it could join the group.
But getting the support of Intel and other key industry leaders will determine whether MIPI succeeds, says Gartner's Bruederle.
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"The thing that will work is getting critical mass. They're off to a good start, but they need to get the other top handset guys and other key players," he said.
True, says Oliver Gunasekara, ARM's director of wireless communications. ARM licenses processor designs to dozens of companies, including TI, STMicro and Intel.
"The goal is to sign up a majority of the industry to jointly participate in creation of standards," Gunasekara said.
He says the mipi.org Web site already lists 10 working groups. These groups will deal with various issues related to cell phone standards.
Texas Instruments and STMicro have worked closely together since last December, when they unveiled their first pact in this field.
They called the earlier pact OMAPI, since it was based on TI's Open Multimedia Applications Platform.
IDC's Leibovitch says the companies made a mistake using the name OMAPI because it associated that group too closely with TI technology. He says that's a reason other companies hesitated to join. He says that with MIPI, they didn't make the same mistake twice. |
