How to Save Android
Android is a hot mess. Google should make it truly open source. This would relieve them of a major anti-trust vulnerability and infuse a massive amount of energy to the project.
Android is a hot mess. Google should make it truly open source. This would relieve them of a major anti-trust vulnerability and infuse a massive amount of energy to the project.
Qualcomm does not have an easy path to replacing Apple revenue. Maybe Apple will fail at producing a modem. Or maybe Qualcomm could come up with a compelling RF/modem combo that Apple would find too compelling to ignore. Not easy, but possible.
Just for the sake of argument could Qualcomm buy its way back to near-term revenue growth? We take a not-so-serious look at one option. The point is there are not a lot of good targets left.
There is a battle brewing for wireless network semis featuring Intel whose chip looks pricey, Marvel who is highly flexible and Qualcomm who has serious radio skills but also a history of losing interest in this market, and even a start-up, Picocom.
We just got back from Barcelona. MWC is back, bustling without being overcrowded and very productive. There was no single bit new thing, but lots of progress on lots of fronts.
The market for base station and RAN silicon is shaping up to one of the most interesting to watch in the new year. And intel seems to have forgotten its long, sorry history in the space, making for some great viewing.
Qualcomm claims Arm wants to shift its business model to charge OEMs rather than chip companies. We think is unlikely, but wow will it be hard if they do try to make that shift.
Will Apple build its own RF chips – it turns out this is much more complicated than it sounds, and Apple is already getting almost everything it wants from its RF suppliers. However, nowhere in this piece do we say it will never happen.
There are a lot of reasons why Apple’s cellular modem may be failing, most of them just come down to the fact that modems are different and hard.
There seems to be some momentum for Arm to sell itself to some sort of consortium of major licensees. In theory, this could be a good outcome, but in practice would be very complex.