Re: IC vendors vie for 3G sockets in Japan -EETimes
Hi Frank,
Recently, Mike and I tried to sort out the role of DoCoMo in the development of bleeding edge asic design for 3G. He correctly pointed out to me that DoCoMo was not in the business of manufacturing handsets, basestations or components. This article, more clearly than I could, describes the role that DoCoMo is playing in the development of the next generation of wireless networks.
IC vendors vie for 3G sockets in Japan
By Anthony Cataldo, EE Times
Jul 21, 2000 (12:40 PM)
URL: eetimes.com
TOKYO — With the move to third-generation cellular services less than a year away in Japan, semiconductor companies are pressing forward in hopes they can tap Japan's hotly competitive wireless communications market, now a bellwether for the wireless industry worldwide. Analog Devices, LSI Logic, Lucent Technologies, Motorola and Texas Instruments have beefed up head count in wireless design centers here, or are preparing to do so, while Intel and Philips are leveraging partnerships to produce 3G chip sets.
NTT Docomo Inc., Japan's top wireless provider, is at the center of the activity. Docomo is preparing to roll out 3G services based on wideband CDMA next spring and is seeking a foothold for wireless Internet services in Europe, even as its three top competitors plan to offer alternative services, based on cdma2000, in fall 2001.
"If there's one place we can make an impact immediately in Japan it's in CDMA," said Greg Helton, the newly appointed vice president of sales and marketing for LSI Logic K.K. That company plans to double the number of wireless engineers by year's end, and has made the push into code-division multiple-access technology here one of its top priorities.
For its part, Philips Semiconductors is leveraging a partnership with Yozan Inc., a Japanese startup developing W-CDMA chip sets that has a close relationship with Docomo. In an alliance Philips inherited when it acquired VLSI Technology Inc., Yozan will provide the matched-filter and rake portions of the chip set and Philips the W-CDMA baseband ICs based on the ARM7 and Oak DSP cores. The chip set is expected to sample later this year, in time for manufacturers to tuck it into 3G phones in 2001.
The partnership could prove lucrative for Philips. Yozan has been working with Docomo on CDMA since the mid-1990s, and is considered one of the service provider's closest allies. Indeed, Yozan "may become one of the most profitable semiconductor device companies," said
Kiyohisa Ota, a Merrill Lynch Japan securities analyst.
Predictions like those assume 3G services will be a hit in Japan, and early signs suggest as much.
Perils of success
Docomo's current mobile Internet service for Japan's second-generation Personal Digital Cellular phones, called i-Mode, has more than 9 million users little more than a year after introduction, making Docomo Japan's largest Internet service provider. In fact, i-Mode has become
so popular — some sources say subscriptions are rising by 1 million people a month — that earlier this year Docomo's servers crashed after being swamped by callers, forcing the company to temporarily halt new i-Mode contracts.
The glitch hasn't slowed Docomo's move to 3G, which it expects to introduce in limited metropolitan areas at the end of May 2001, said Kiyohito Nagata, senior engineering manager for Docomo. So far the company has conducted in-house test trials using prototype terminals
from suppliers. Final prototypes are expected this summer and field trials will begin in September. When the service rolls out, there should be four types of terminals with different bandwidth requirements, such as video transmission, Internet access, e-mail and voice.
As Docomo readies W-CDMA, rivals DDI, IDO and KDD aim to launch services based on Qualcomm Inc.'s cdma2000 standard by the fall of 2001. KDD, Japan's former monopoly international carrier, plans to merge this October with DDI, partly owned by Kyocera, to form a larger carrier to be called KDDI.
So critical is the move to 3G services that Docomo has set out to monitor the entire technology chain, even down to the device level. Nagata recently paid a visit to circuit-technology researchers at a semiconductor conference in Honolulu, with a twofold mission: to sketch out the
company's 3G plans and to plead for help.
Foremost on Nagata's mind was keeping the power consumption of the TX power amplifier, which eats considerable juice during talk time, to a 250-milliwatt maximum. Doing so will take advanced process technologies. Nagata estimated that devices like digital signal
processors, baseband processors and flash memories will have to use 0.18-micron rules.
Another concern is cost. "I know the technology already exists, but I want a low price," Nagata said.
Meanwhile, the red-hot action in Japan is poised to spread to Europe. Docomo is acquiring 15 percent of the Dutch mobile phone service KPN Mobile NV, with plans to roll out its i-Mode service in Europe. KPN is said to welcome Docomo's involvement to help with the launch of 3G multimedia services, and according to European reports most analysts think the investment marks the start of a Docomo spending spree on the continent.
For U.S. chip makers, the KDDI group's cdma2000 plans hold just as much promise as the Docomo rollout. Qualcomm, which made a successful bid to get its CDMAone technology adopted by Docomo rivals DDI and IDO last year, announced last May that IDO and Hitachi Ltd. would begin field trials of its High Data Rate technology this year. The Internet protocol-based HDR is a 2.4-Mbit/second peak rate in a
standard 1.25-MHz channel bandwidth for fixed, portable and mobile applications.
LSI Logic, which holds a license for Qualcomm's CDMA technology, is playing in the CDMAone, W-CDMA and cdma2000 markets. Its cdma2000 chip set, now under development, is to be introduced in tandem with cdma2000's formal debut next year. "We're in constant talks with DDI," said Helton of LSI Logic K.K.
Helton said service providers and terminal makers will probably first adopt the 1xRTT version of cdma2000, which uses orthogonal coding on a single frequency to get data transfer rates up to 300 kbits/s. The faster 3xRTT spec that Qualcomm is pushing uses three distinct frequency carriers, he said.
Handset focus
Angling for a piece of a growing business, other chip set makers, such as Analog Devices Inc., hope to step up their presence in Japan by focusing on handset customers backing the Qualcomm standard. Sales of converters and amplifiers for terminals are some of the Norwood, Mass., company's fastest-selling products in Japan. ADI, which has also sold baseband chip sets to companies like Kyocera, Toshiba and Mitsubishi, expects to add at least 15 new designers and field engineers to its wireless design center, boosting its dedicated wireless engineering head count to 75 people, said executive vice president Brian McAloon.
Meanwhile, wireless baseband newcomers such as Intel Corp. are starting to make inroads in Japan. The microprocessor giant last year bought DSP Group, a company with design-wins among wireless phone vendors here, and recently forged a partnership with Japan's second-largest cell phone maker, Mitsubishi Electric. As part of the deal, Mitsubishi will use Intel's StrongARM processor in future 3G
phones.
Earlier this year, Intel opened a wireless technology development facility in Tsukuba, Japan, home to many R&D teams here. The announcement came a few months after Texas Instruments Inc. said it would move 100 design engineers from Tokyo to Tsukuba to work under one roof with a team of about 70 researchers at its R&D center, primarily on W-CDMA. There TI will work with OEMs on its Open Multimedia Applications Platform, which combines a C55X DSP with the ARM9 processor along with customer-defined gates of logic,
memory and mixed-signal functionality.
For its part, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector in recent years has made Japan a focal point for wireless baseband chip set development with its MCore 32-bit RISC CPU as the centerpiece. Motorola even went so far as to offer MCore free to companies that would sell MCore-based systems in Japan. So far, Motorola has announced that Yamaha Corp. will license MCore for applications like musical instruments, audio devices, game consoles and mulitimedia applications, but it's unclear how well the device has been accepted for cell phones. Motorola's chip group here did not respond to questions from EE Times.
But another Motorola division has scored at least one coup in Japan. The Network Solutions Sector has nabbed a key role in Docomo's Internet Protocol Core network, to be used in moving from i-Mode narrowband data service to W-CDMA. Motorola will work with Cisco Systems and Xybridge Technologies [ Ed. I'll post Xybridge 411 separately at NFCTF, interesting company, IMO ] to develop the packet wireline infrastructure for that wireless service.
Lucent Technologies has also been adding resources in an attempt to crack Japan's 3G market. In the last three years, Lucent has opened new R&D sites in Yokosuka and Yokohama, where wireless development is a primary focus. The expansion appears to have paid off: Docomo picked Lucent as a supplier of basestations and radio network controllers for W-CDMA. The company is also involved in 3G trials with IDO for cdma2000.
Docomo expects infrastructure equipment to be finalized as early as September — effectively a green light for equipment suppliers like Lucent. "This is not a trial anymore. This is a product effort," said William Hardy, director of marketing for Lucent's wireless operations in Japan.
The level of investment here by foreign companies in wireless technology belies the overall disappointing returns seen in Japan in recent years. For instance, sales from LSI Logic's Japanese subsidiary have been modest compared with the company's 40 percent overall growth, said Helton.
Fierce field
Nevertheless, Japan is noted for a crowded field of fiercely competitive domestic cellular phone manufacturers producing ultracompact, full-featured handsets that meet tough price and product specification guidelines set by influential service providers.
The situation has made it tough for large global manufacturers like Nokia and Motorola to crack the market. Yet foreign chip and equipment companies are making progress providing the core technology to domestic OEMs looking for something more than just off-the-shelf components.
"All major cellular phone vendors here doing wideband CDMA are developing their own ASICs," Helton said.
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Undoubtedly, major advances in ASIC design are on the horizon. Furthermore, DoCoMo is correctly projecting the marketplace and demanding that its vendors provide devices with low power budgets and low cost to own and operate handsets. IMO, both will be crucial in order to develop the mass markets for 3G that the industry hopes for.
RGD |
