Wireless communication: successful differentiation on standard technology by innovation

Abstract

The rise of the wireless internet is the megatrend in communication industry. Mobile communication devices will be the dominant platform for information access, gaming, music and spending time with distant friends. About 5 bn or three quarters of the world population is using mobile phones. Internet enabled mobile phones at affordable cost will be the most common internet access device in the near future. At the high end powerful and versatile smartphones need faster and more energy efficient semiconductors. The presentation will start with a brief summary of the paradigm shifts in the "mobile world" from voice calls to data transmission and the current situation in the renascent mobile ecosystem. The entry of powerful internet and consumer brands and now even luxury designer brands into the mobile handset arena mark the start of a new era changing the dynamics in this field. Today, fabless or fab-lite business models are common in the wireless semiconductor value chain. In this model vendors differentiate through services, architectures, design but also their capability to extract maximum product benefits in density, power consumption, performance, functionality and robustness/yield from a standard CMOS process. In the highly competitive mobile phone market growth and profit depends on differentiation by innovation. This requires technology know-how being effectively transferred into the design system and application specific device structures to create optimized circuits.