分析：英特尔手机芯片的金钱之路

Analyst: Intel buying into wireless

Mark LaPedus

After years' of trying to enter the wireless chip fray, Intel Corp. is buying its way back into the arena-again, according to an analyst.

Recently, for example, Intel bought Infineon’s baseband business.Infineon's wireless business unit, which is in the process of being acquired by Intel Corp., is taking over Blue Wonder Communications GmbH, a specialist in LTE communications. Blue Wonder (Dresden, Germany) was founded in 2008 and provides LTE intellectual property. The company concluded a funding round in 2009, and the 50-person company claims to have orders for its technology.

And now, Intel has icensed Ceva Inc.'s digital signal processor (DSP) intellectual property (IP). Intel has licensed the CEVA-XC communication DSP. Ceva's CEVA-XC is a DSP designed specifically for 4G terminals and wireless infrastructure. It supports multiple air interfaces in software, including LTE, TD-LTE, WiMAX 16m, HSPA+, HSPA, TD-SCDMA, GSM and CDMA.

"It's very simple," said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts Co. "Intel is buying its way into the cellphone chip market with Infineon and others that is has acquired (and likely others, yet)."

For years, Intel has backed WiMax. Now, it could be making a play in LTE. "The Ceva-X family of DSP cores is more powerful than the Ceva TeakLite family that Infineon has been using, and likely Intel sees the Ceva-X approach allowing them to better address the emerging LTE market," he said in an e-mail.

For years, Intel has tried but failed to enter the fray. In 2000, Intel backed away from the CDMA chip set market. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company entered the IS-95-compliant chip-set market for code-division multiple access handsets after agreeing to acquire cell-phone IC specialist DSP Communications Inc. for $1.6 billion in 1999.

But Intel had little luck in garnering design wins in CDMA, due in part to stiff competition from the leading supplier of chip sets in this booming business-Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego, analysts said.

More recently, Intel rolled out a chip line, Manitoba, which flopped.