Handset Connectivity Technologies – 3rd Edition

• Publication date: March 2012

1 Summary Executive summary Global handset shipments grew 15 percent in 2011 to about 1.5 billion units, although the growth rate slowed down in Q4-2011 in the wake of the deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, especially in Europe. Global sales of featurephones were nearly flat, while smartphone shipments grew almost 60 percent to 470 million units in 2011. Penetration of smartphones is growing worldwide as...

1 Summary

Executive summary

Global handset shipments grew 15 percent in 2011 to about 1.5 billion units, although the growth rate slowed down in Q4-2011 in the wake of the deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, especially in Europe. Global sales of featurephones were nearly flat, while smartphone shipments grew almost 60 percent to 470 million units in 2011. Penetration of smartphones is growing worldwide as handset vendors adopt smartphone operating systems in order to reduce development time and cost for new advanced handset models. Mobile operators have put their hopes on smartphones as drivers of data revenues and are willing to subsidise smartphones that drive adoption of postpaid subscriptions and data plans. Mobile subscribers also put more emphasis on the user experience and support of native apps and web services. There were 4.7 billion mobile phones in use at the end of 2011, including 750 million smartphones. About 4.1 billion people, or nearly 60 percent of the world’s population, owned a mobile phone. The popularity of smartphones is driving attach rates of wireless connectivity technologies including Bluetooth, WLAN, NFC and GPS that enable new use cases for handsets. Bluetooth can be used to connect headsets, fitness and medical sensors or perform file transfers. WLAN can be used for Internet access, VoIP services or fast file and media transfer. Near Field Communication (NFC) is a standard for short-range wireless, point-to-point communication. NFC operates in the unlicensed 13.56 MHz band over distances of about 10 centimetres. When deployed in mobile phones, NFC can be used for countless applications, ranging from information exchange and device pairing, to electronic ticketing and secure contactless payments. The most important driver for GPS integration in handsets today is arguably the interest in location-based services (LBS), although emergency call location regulations are being introduced in more countries. In contrast to emergency call services relying on occasional push to fix positioning, consumer-oriented LBS pose new challenges. These services range from advanced turn-by-turn navigation services to local search, people tracking, friendfinders and social networking.



Handsets thus need to support services that require both infrequent, fast push to fix updates in addition to continuous position updates – all whilst conserving battery life. The revised emergency call mandates in the US may well require approaches such as using improved hybrid location technologies in all handsets. GPS technology for handsets has matured, offering much better performance in terms of sensitivity, power consumption, size and price than was possible a few years ago. Support for other satellite systems such as GLONASS, Galileo and Compass will also be added over time. The first handsets with GPS/GLONASS receivers are already available. Using multiple satellite systems concurrently ensures additional visible satellites and incrementally better performance in urban canyons. However, in order to improve indoor performance, hybrid positioning systems are needed. Hybrid positioning systems can fuse data from sensors to provide input to position calculations. Examples include inertial sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes, as well as compasses and pressure sensors. In the near future, the main barrier is the low data accuracy and high drift obtained from low cost sensors, making dead reckoning for extended periods of time unfeasible. Periodic calibrations using signal measurements from cellular and WLAN networks can improve the system performance. Bluetooth is now a standard feature on most featurephone models and virtually all smartphones. In 2011, shipments of Bluetooth-enabled handsets reached 1.1 billion units and the Bluetooth attach rate grew to more than 73 percent across all handset segments. The attach rate for WLAN connectivity in the smartphone segment has grown from less than 6 percent in 2006 to about 95 percent in 2011. However, the attach rate for WLAN is still less than 5 percent in the featurephone segment. The attach rate for GPS in handsets across all air interface standards grew from 33 percent in 2010 to 38 percent in 2011. GPS connectivity has become a standard feature on most smartphone models except a few low cost GSM/WCDMA models. The GPS attach rate in the GSM/WCDMA smartphone segment increased from 90 percent in 2010 to about 95 percent in 2011. NFC may finally have reached a breakthrough as more than 40 NFC-enabled handset models were released by the end of 2011. At the beginning of March 2012, more than 100 models had been announced by nearly all leading vendors. Berg Insight estimates that sales of NFC-handsets reached about 30 million units in 2011, up from roughly 3 million in 2010.

Global Phones And Pda Industry

Table of Contents

Table of Contents......... i
List of Figures...... vi
Executive summary.....1
1 Mobile handsets and smartphones .3
1.1 Introduction..3
1.2 Wireless communication technologies..5
1.2.1 Cellular communication technologies....5
1.2.2 Personal and local area networks...6
1.2.3 Spectrum and interference7
1.3 Broadcast connectivity technologies ....8
1.3.1 Radio .....8
1.3.2 Mobile TV......8
1.3.3 Global navigation satellite systems.9
1.4 Connectivity technology integration in handsets .....10
1.4.1 Handset hardware and software platforms.10
1.4.2 Horizontal and vertical integration of connectivity technologies ...12
1.5 Overview of handset segments ....14
1.5.1 The smartphone category is expanding across multiple price-tiers.....14
1.5.2 Best selling smartphones in 2011.15
1.5.3 Handset form factors and input mechanisms....17
1.5.4 Evolution of smartphone user interfaces ....18
1.6 Handset connectivity trends..19
1.6.1 Wireless connectivity attach rates driven by higher smartphone sales19
1.6.2 Proliferation of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handset models20
1.6.3 NFC is gradually gaining momentum ..22
2 Handset platform vendors ......23
2.1 The handset chipset industry 23
2.1.1 Industry consolidation will continue.....24
2.1.2 Handset baseband vendors...25
2.1.3 Connectivity chipset vendors .26
2.1.4 Sensor IC vendors....27
2.2 Cellular platform vendor profiles ..28
2.2.1 Broadcom...29
2.2.2 Intel......31
2.2.3 Marvell .32
2.2.4 MediaTek....33
2.2.5 MStar Semiconductor .....34
2.2.6 NVIDIA .35
2.2.7 Qualcomm..36
2.2.8 Renesas Mobile Corporation..39
2.2.9 Spreadtrum Communications 40
2.2.10 ST-Ericsson 41
3 GNSS technologies ..43
3.1 Overview of global navigation satellite systems43
3.1.1 Global Positioning System (GPS) .44
3.1.2 Galileo .45
3.1.3 GLONASS...46
3.1.4 Compass/Beidou 2...47
3.2 Mobile location technologies and platforms .....48
3.2.1 Mobile location platforms48
3.2.2 Control plane and user plane location platforms......49
3.2.3 A-GPS and A-GNSS .50
3.2.4 Hybrid and mixed mode technologies.51
3.3 GPS and GNSS chipsets for handsets53
3.3.1 Standalone receivers53
3.3.2 Host-based receivers ......53
3.3.3 Integrated receiver architectures...54
3.3.4 Software-based receivers54
3.3.5 GNSS receivers for handsets .54
3.4 GNSS chipset and software vendors ..55
3.4.1 GPS IC vendor market shares56
3.4.2 CellGuide....57
3.4.3 SkyTraq ......58
3.4.4 u-blox...58
4 Bluetooth, WLAN and NFC technologies ....61
4.1 Bluetooth technologies...61
4.1.1 Bluetooth specifications ..62
4.1.2 Bluetooth applications and profiles......63
4.2 Wireless LAN technologies....65
4.2.1 IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards65
4.2.2 WLAN in mobile phones..67
4.2.3 WLAN handset shipments trends..69
4.2.4 WLAN chipset vendor market shares...70
4.3 Near Field Communication technologies...71
4.3.1 NFC Forum specifications......71
4.3.2 NFC modes 73
4.3.3 NFC solution architectures and chipsets ....74
4.3.4 NFC mobile payment trials and initiatives...74
4.3.5 Overview of NFC-enabled handsets ....77
4.4 Connectivity chipset vendor profiles ...78
4.4.1 CSR .....79
4.4.2 Inside Secure ....81
4.4.3 Nanoradio...82
4.4.4 NXP Semiconductors ......82
4.4.5 Redpine Signals 83
4.4.6 Sony Corporation .....84
4.4.7 STMicroelectronics...84
4.4.8 Texas Instruments ....85
5 Handset vendor profiles...87
5.1 Handset market developments ....87
5.1.1 Smartphone ecosystem developments ......89
5.1.2 Handset vendor market shares.....90
5.2 Apple...92
5.2.1 Device portfolio .92
5.2.2 Handset shipments ..93
5.3 HTC.....93
5.3.1 Device portfolio .93
5.3.2 Handset shipments ..94
5.4 Huawei 95
5.4.1 Device portfolio .95
5.4.2 Handset shipments ..96
5.5 LG Electronics ..96
5.5.1 Device portfolio .96
5.5.2 Handset shipments ..97
5.6 Motorola Mobility .....98
5.6.1 Device portfolio .98
5.6.2 Handset shipments 100
5.7 Nokia.100
5.7.1 Device portfolio ......101
5.7.2 Handset shipments 102
5.8 RIM....103
5.8.1 Device portfolio ......104
5.8.2 Handset shipments 104
5.9 Samsung..104
5.9.1 Device portfolio ......105
5.9.2 Handset shipments 106
5.10 Sony Mobile Communications ...107
5.10.1 Device portfolio ......107
5.10.2 Handset shipments 109
5.11 ZTE ...109
5.11.1 Device portfolio ......109
5.11.2 Handset shipments 110
5.12 Second tier handset vendors .....111
5.12.1 Acer ...111
5.12.2 Dell ....112
5.12.3 Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications..112
5.12.4 Kyocera Sanyo Telecom......113
5.12.5 Lenovo Mobile Communications 114
5.12.6 Micromax Informatics ....114
5.12.7 NEC Casio Mobile Communications..115
5.12.8 Panasonic Mobile Communications ..115
5.12.9 Pantech ....116
5.12.10 Sharp.117
5.12.11 TCL Communication .....118
6 Market trends and forecasts .119
6.1 Market trends..119
6.1.1 Rising adoption of smartphones continues to reshape the mobile industry ....119
6.1.2 Changing demands drives consolidation in the wireless chipset industry120
6.1.3 Cost requirements favour development of integrated chipsets...121
6.1.4 Hybrid location technologies drive performance improvements in handsets ..122
6.2 Handset shipment forecasts124
6.2.1 Handset shipment forecasts by region and primary access technology ..124
6.2.2 Handset shipment forecasts by category and price segment.....126
6.2.3 GNSS-enabled GSM/WCDMA/LTE handset shipment forecasts by segment .127
6.2.4 GNSS handset shipment forecasts by geographical region 129
6.2.5 WLAN-enabled handset shipment forecasts....131
6.2.6 NFC-enabled handset shipment forecasts ......132
6.3 Connectivity chipset shipments and revenue forecasts133
6.3.1 GNSS receiver chipset revenue forecasts 134
6.3.2 Bluetooth, WLAN and NFC chipset revenue forecasts ..135
Glossary ....139


List of Figures

Figure 1.1: Mobile subscriptions and handset sales by standard (World Q4-2011)....3
Figure 1.2: Mobile subscriptions and handset sales by region (World Q4-2011).4
Figure 1.3: Range versus throughput for wireless communication technologies .5
Figure 1.4: Mobile phone hardware and software platforms...10
Figure 1.5: Handset shipments by segment (World 2006–2011) ...14
Figure 1.6: Examples of best-selling smartphones (2011) ......16
Figure 1.7: Mobile handset form factors......17
Figure 1.8: Smartphone shipments by primary input mechanism (World 2006–2011) ....18
Figure 1.9: Handset shipments by connectivity technology (2006–2011) ...19
Figure 1.10: Number of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handset models available ......21
Figure 2.1: Handset semiconductor revenues by company (2011) ......23
Figure 2.2: Cellular and connectivity chipset revenues (2009–2011)....24
Figure 2.3: Handset connectivity chipset revenue market shares (2008–2011) .26
Figure 2.4: Examples of sensor IC vendors.27
Figure 2.5: Key wireless IC and handset platform vendors.....28
Figure 2.6: Examples of Qualcomm baseband processors for smartphones.....36
Figure 3.1: Current and planned Galileo and GPS signals .....46
Figure 3.2: Mobile location system overview......48
Figure 3.3: Assisted GNSS technologies.....50
Figure 3.4: GPS chipset developers and offerings....55
Figure 3.5: GPS IC vendor market shares, GSM/WCDMA/LTE handsets (2006–2011)....56
Figure 4.1: Examples of Bluetooth profiles..64
Figure 4.2: IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards ...66
Figure 4.3: Examples of WLAN ICs for mobile phones in production (2011)......68
Figure 4.4: WLAN-enabled handset shipments by standard (World 2005–2011)......69
Figure 4.5: WLAN IC vendor market shares (2006–2011) 70
Figure 4.6: Examples of NFC-enabled handsets on the market (Q1-2012) .76
Figure 4.7: Overview of handset connectivity chipset vendor offerings78
Figure 5.1: Smartphone shipments by vendor and OS (World 2011)...88
Figure 5.2: Handset vendor market shares and revenues (2011)..91
Figure 5.3: Apple handset sales and market share ...92
Figure 5.4: HTC handset sales and market share .....94
Figure 5.5: Huawei handset sales and market share 96
Figure 5.6: LG handset sales and market share.97
Figure 5.7: Motorola handset sales and market share .....99
Figure 5.8: Nokia handset sales and market share .102
Figure 5.9: RIM handset sales and market share ....103
Figure 5.10: Samsung handset sales and market share106
Figure 5.11: Sony Mobile Communication handset sales and market share ...108
Figure 5.12: ZTE handset sales and market share..110
Figure 6.1: Handset sales by region (2007–2016)...124
Figure 6.2: Handset sales by air interface technology (World 2010–2016)125
Figure 6.3: Handset shipments by segment and price range (World 2010–2016) ..127
Figure 6.4: GNSS attach rate forecast by handset segment (World 2010–2016) ....128
Figure 6.5: GNSS-enabled GSM/WCDMA/LTE handset sales by region (2010–2016)...129
Figure 6.6: WLAN attach rate forecast by handset segment (World 2010–2016) ....131
Figure 6.7: NFC handset shipment forecast (World 2010–2016) .133
Figure 6.8: GNSS chipset revenues by category (World 2010–2016).134
Figure 6.9: Bluetooth, WLAN and NFC chipset revenues (World 2010–2016)..136