TI's mobile chip sales suffer
Chinese chipping away at its business
THINGS AIN'T so hot at Texas Instruments where profits are down. Analysts can't seem to agree the reasons why the second most important mobile phone chip supplier after Qualcomm isn't doing so well.
The INQ can suggest some reasons though. For example, both Sony Ericsson and Nokia have recently said that they will diversify their chip suppliers rather than source just from TI.
TI's Ron Slaymaker actually admitted that, "Sony Ericsson has been shifting orders away from TI, but apart from that, the company is maintaining its share of customer orders."
So is the cause a general decline in the number of handsets being sold? Not really since last week Nokia said the outlook for the year still looked pretty rosy and Nokia is TI's biggest customer for phone chips.
Where TI appears to have been caught on the hop is with its own lack of 3G chips. So much so that TI had to get into bed with Ericsson Mobile Platforms to get a quick hop up the ladder for 3G technology.
Perhaps the biggest threat to TI is coming from Chinese manufacturers. That's because Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have all started to shift production of their handsets to China.
Chinese market watcher, CCID Consulting, has just estimated that because of this trend, exports of handsets from China are expected to increase by some 26.2 per cent.
While CCID admits that it is difficult for Chinese mobile phone chip makers to break into the supply systems of the major handset names such as Nokia and Motorola, they'll get a boost from the growing strength of Chinese phone manufacturers such as ZTE, Huawei and K-Touch.
The company predicts that China's mobile phone chip market will break through 100 billion Yuan (£7.35 billion) in 2009, and it is forecasted that the market will reach 146.13 billion Yuan (£10.7 billion) in 2012.
One thing is for sure, as time goes by the Chinese mobile phone chip makers will move upmarket so even the likes of Qualcomm will start to feel the pinch. µ
L'INQ
CCID
Comments
Chinese vs. T.I.
Okay, the handsets get made in China, that I understand, the labor cost for assembly is lower there.But where do the Chinese assemblers get the chips that go into the mobiles? Are there Chinese chip companies designing and fabricating the chips? If there are, how did they manage to design the chips without violating any patents that T.I. holds? Or does that not matter for Chinese companies that are all owned by either Peoples' Liberation Army officers or Communist Party members?
Arrogance comes before the fall
The typical Fox News audience may not have noticed yet that there are a lot of educated Chinese people how can easily develop and build the electronics for mobile phones and other electronic equipment. The same is true for countries like Brazil, all countries in the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan etc..Fresh and juicy
Apropos Qualcomm and US patents:"German court invalidates Qualcomm patent"