Study Highlights Key Role of Cell Phones as Magnet for Chip Applications

Cellphones have transformed our lifestyles and have become an integral part of our everyday life. In developed countries, cellular communication has become a necessity. In third-world countries, cellular has become an enabler of economic progress. Consequently cellular is gaining an increasing share of the entire electronics market; likely overtaking the PC market in the next decade.

The cellphone continues to be the physical and market magnet that is pulling in the functionality of digital cameras, PDAs, MP3 players, GPS navigators, Bluetooth, FM Radio, digital TV, cordless phones and even smart cards, and is quickly becoming the dominant market for each and all of these functions.

A new study by Forward Concepts explores the market dynamics of each of these functions and profiles the chip providers and their market shares for each. It forecasts the markets for virtually all cellphone integrated circuits, including digital basebands, RF transceivers and PA's, application processors, graphics and other coprocessors, imagers, memories and chips for all the new functions being added to cellphones.

Europe will be the fastest-growing market for WCDMA in 2007.
EDGE markets will continue to grow in spite of excitement in 3G.
WEDGE will begin to dominate the 3G market, providing EDGE fallback service for the thinly populated 3G networks.
The mainstream cellphone camera market is rapidly migrating to 2 megapixels.
The demand for voice-only low-cost and ultra-low-cost cellphones will constitute the dominant market volume for the next three years.
Over the next five years, the cellphone market will experience strong growth in multiple-mode wireless peripheral chips supporting WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio and/or mobile TV.
The global fragmentation of mobile TV standards will lead to strong demand for multi-standard mobile TV receiver chipsets.
Qualcomm's MediaFLO has achieved early dominance in the U.S. mobile TV market.
HDTV-aspect-ratio LCD displays will explode with the rapid growth of mobile TV.
In spite of broadcast mobile TV, video streaming over the network will continue to grow with 3G rollout.