手机芯片大厂将并购，小厂和初创面临绝迹

Analyst: Infineon, TI are second tier in mobile chips

by Peter Clarke

Infineon, Marvell, Renesas and Texas Instruments are forming the second tier of chip suppliers to the mobile phone industry and the mobile business units of these companies are potentially liable to merger and acquisition activity, according to Mike Bryant, an analyst with Future Horizons.

Companies with even less market share and startups will have no place in the new order, which puts the survival of companies such as Icera at risk, Bryant said.

Speaking at a mid-year semiconductor market forecast organized here by Future Horizons (Sevenoaks, England), Bryant observed that depite consolidations such as the one that created ST-Ericsson, there are still a similar number of tier-one tier semiconductor suppliers as there are top-tier cell phone manufacturers, which in the long term is not tenable.

"We expect MediaTek, Qualcomm, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson to survive as the main suppliers, with a second tier of Renesas, Marvell, Infineon, TI, and maybe a few others also present," said Bryant. "We cannot see smaller or niche players, such as Icera, surviving in this market as OEMs want complete solutions," he added.

MediaTek Inc. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) has burst into the top tier of mobile phone chip suppliers mainly on the strength of its offering at the low end, Bryant said.

"MediaTek of Taiwan is the fastest growing chipset supplier and is pushing other suppliers out of the low- to medium-end business. However over 150 million units are to the illegal non-IEMI numbered market," said Bryant.

The International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMEI is a number, intended to be unique and used to identify GSM, WCDMA, and iDEN mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones.

The mis- or non-use of the IEMI number has been rife in China, Bryant said but China is beginning to crack down on the practice. However, this may have an additional benefit for MediaTek because as illegal phones with duplicate or no IMEI number are disabled by operators it will stimulate the replacement market for legitimate sales.